Professor files complaint of scientific misconduct over allegation of ghostwriting

A complaint of scientific misconduct has been filed with the US Office of Research Integrity regarding a ghostwritten paper on paroxetine (marketed as Paxil), published in 2001 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

In the complaint Jay Amsterdam, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and co-principal investigator of the paroxetine study 352 for bipolar depression, claims that he was “excluded from the final data review, analysis, and publication.”

Professor Amsterdam’s lawyer wrote in a letter to the university’s president, Amy Gutmann, “It is my client’s belief that the data from his study was effectively stolen from him, manipulated and used in a ghostwritten article . . . in order to advance a marketing scheme by GlaxoSmithKline to …