How is medical science ghostwriting done? An industry has developed of professional writers who edit and write research papers for a fee. Some superficial acknowledgement of such services may appear in an endnote to published papers, but this rarely clarifies who actually did what work, and under who’s instruction. We studied the writing process of one particular paper that was written as part of the marketing strategy to encourage opioid prescriptions by pharma company Mallinckrodt. Using drafts and correspondence available through the Opioid Industry Documents Archive of UCSF, we reconstructed the production of one particular article in great detail, from the marketing message that framed it, to the eventual publication in a peer reviewed journal. A medical writing company performed the bulk of the work, under instruction of the marketing department. The text was also edited by the pharma company and only marginally touched by the academics who eventually appeared as the paper’s byline authors. Our analysis shows how academic authority is woven into the production of marketing messages masked as scientific publications. The investigation was structured by Paul Ricœur’s conceptualisation of imaginaries, which we believe adds analytic strength to the use of this concept in Science and Technology Studies.
Bernisson, Maud, and Willem Halffman. ‘Imaginaries of Writing and Pain: The Backstage of a Ghostwritten Paper’. Social Studies of Science, 7 September 2026, 03063127261474457. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261474457.
