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To the Editor: In their study of guest authorship and ghostwriting of publications related to rofecoxib, Dr Ross and colleagues¹ selected an article by Thal et al² as their primary example of an apparently guest-authored clinical trial publication. Guest authorship was inferred because (1) an early draft identified as part of rofecoxib litigation indicated "External author?" rather than the first 3 names later included; (2) only 1 of these 3 academically affiliated authors was acknowledged in the draft version as a participating investigator in the Rofecoxib 078 study group; and (3) results in the 2 versions were quite similar. The article and accompanying Editorial by Drs DeAngelis and Fontanarosa³ assumed that these authors had little or no role in either the study or in preparing the publication and therefore were uninvolved "guest" authors.

The 3 alleged guests in fact played substantial roles: conceiving and designing the study (Thal), confirming accuracy . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Steven Ferris, PhD
steven.ferris@med.nyu.edu
Department of Psychiatry
New York University School of Medicine
New York

Douglas Galasko, MD
Department of Neurosciences
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla

Louis Kirby, MD
Provista Life Sciences
Phoenix, Arizona

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