As many of you know, one of the big discussions in our industry this week, has been the topic of ghost writing. Senator Grassley (or his scribes) have been writing letters to Wyeth and Design Write on the Evils of Ghost Writing.
On the surface, the word ghost writing implies some type of evil. When we were all children, the one thing we were afraid of was ghosts. Ghost tours have popped up in every major tourist city from St. Augustine, Florida to Plymouth, Massachusetts. They are the themes of popular movies and mystery novels like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Stephen King’s The Shining.
But the practice of getting others to help write one’s speeches and papers is thousands of years old- scribes faithfully wrote down the thoughts and letters of Pharaohs and Kings.
Let’s face it, not all of us can write, and not all of us can write technical documents such as journal articles. Most physicians can barely write a legible prescription, never mind a journal article.
Names like Peggy Noonan, Ted Sorenson, or John Favreau may mean little to you, but they are presidential speechwriters (Noonan – Reagan, Sorenson – Kennedy, and Favreau – Obama). The Washington Post featured a profile of Favreau entitled Helping to Write History. Mr. Favreau will be heading up the White House Speechwriting Office. There are many great writers who have passed through that shop and Presidents such as Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, and Clinton all relied heavily upon great speechwriters and gave great speeches. I would dare to say that even the pious Senator Grassley has staff who write his constituent letters and speeches.
I don’t ever remember, in all my life, hearing a politician give credit to the speechwriter during his or her speech, letter, or newspaper op–ed, in essence, the real author is ____.
Of course, politicians read their speeches prior to giving them, they review and provide outlines for their op-ed stories, they review letters prior to sending them (well, at least a few of the letters). Every Senate office has computer systems dedicated to responding to constituent mail, all with pre-written and formatted letters.
We want our politicians focused on setting policy issues and paying attention to what is important and not writing. In the same way, we want our researchers focused on research and not necessarily writing papers.
I discussed this with a friend of mine who is an economic researcher, and according to him, Nobel Prize winners routinely have research assistants write their research papers and often, because of publication bias, leave out the names of the assistants from the papers.
Some of the best minds in the world rely on help for their papers, so why should medicine be different?
So the question is “why are we so focused on ghosts?” Perhaps the discussion should be centered around what efficiencies can be made by collaboration between medical writers and researchers and how can we work more closely together to ensure that our information is accurate.
In the same way, President Elect Obama would not give his inaugural address without significant input, thus physicians hold to the same pride of authorship and as a matter of principle, ensure the accuracy of the information they are proclaiming.
So on Inaugural Day, remember there was a ghost writer who wrote Obama’s great speech and think that perhaps ghosts are not something to be afraid of after all.