Knowledge of ghostwriting and financial conflicts-of-interest reduces the perceived credibility of biomedical research

Table 1 Assessment of face validity by ghostwriting experts

Statement	Level of Agreement (n = 5)*	Percent of Agreement
"Dr. Harvey is a Key Opinion Leader"	4.0 ±1.73†	80%
"The vignette accurately describes an incident of ghostwriting similar to those known to have occurred in real life."	4.6 ± 0.548	100%
"A psychiatrist who reads the antidepressant RCT literature is likely to come across studies that were generated in a manner similar to that described in the vignette." ‡	4.6 ± 0.548	100%
"The multiple conflicts-of-interest described in this vignette have been common among authors of RCTs in the SSRI and SNRI literature."	4.8 ± 0.447	100%

* Responses were on a 5-point Likert-type scale, with 1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Neutral, 4 = Agree, 5 = Strongly Agree
† Four of the five raters agreed, but there was one dissenting opinion of "1"
‡ One rater wrote us asking for clarification, noting that subcontracted medical writers have been used in the antidepressant literature, while we described the use of authors directly employed by the pharmaceutical company, a practice known to have occurred in publications on other medication classes such as Cox-2 inhibitors (26). We responded that the rater should decide whether a company employee is similar to a subcontractor when all the details are known. The rater then submitted a rating of "4" (agree) for this question.

ISSN: 1756-0500