BMJ  2004;329:1345 (4 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7478.1345

Letter

Transparency and trust

Figure for ghost written articles was misquoted

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Editor's choice in the issue of 23 October on transparency and trust seems to perpetuate a misleading press citation of my testimony to a House of Commons Select Committee last month.¹ The original statement, supported by the transcript, was that 50% of the articles dealing with therapeutics were ghost written, not 50% of all articles.^{2 3}

I, like most readers, almost instinctively shrink from a claim that anything like 50% of the articles, even those on therapeutics alone, are ghost written in journals such as the BMJ, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and the Lancet. But equally instinctively, most readers if asked to estimate how many of the key articles on their drugs, and this means articles in major journals, pharmaceutical companies are likely to have had a determining role in writing, would probably come up with figures close to 100%. If the question is in . . . [Full text of this article]

Bangor LL57 2PW Healy-Hergest@compuserve.com

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