Crystals And Catalysts

( This blog post is an extension/update of this blog post ) There is a huge difference between finding out that your favourite author uses a ghost writer to write their novels and finding out that the pharmaceutical industry uses ghost writers for most, if not all of their scientific content.  Disturbingly, someone else has been paid to write the paper, the scientific research which governs our health and wellbeing has been written by someone else (a “medical ghost writer”) not the author(s) whose name sits at the top of the paper.  These writers aren’t called ghost writers; they have a more professional name: medical writers. They’re anyone with a strong scientific background and are employed in agencies, recruited by pharmaceutical companies to help them with the approval and the promotion of new therapies coming to the drug market.   This is where the problem emerges, we’re supposed to trust Key Opinion Leaders (KOL’s – a doctor/healthcare professional/scientist) because

There is a huge difference between finding out that your favourite author uses a ghostwriter to write their novels and finding out that the pharmaceutical industry uses ghostwriters for the majority of their scientific content. Who are the medical ghostwriters? These writers aren’t called ghostwriters; they have a more professional name: medical writers. They are anyone with a science background (which doesn’t have to be a background in the therapy areas the agency is working on) and most likely a PhD.  Medical writers work in agencies and these agencies are employed by pharmaceutical companies to help them with the approval and the promotion of new therapies coming to the drug market by providing advice and the preparation of various scientific materials such as slide decks and publications for scientific journals. This is where the problem arises, a medical writer can write publications but will not have their name published on it, and instead, the name of the