ABSTRACT
Large drug companies of-ten create their own study designs and contract with contract-research organizations to develop a network of sites, implement the trial protocol at those sites, and send report forms to the sponsoring company, which performs the data analysis. Many interviews conducted for this report confirmed the wide prevalence of this syndrome in publications of drug-trial reports, editorials, and review articles. The nonwriting author, who may be uninvolved in the research and have been requested to author the article to enhance its prestige, has final control over the manuscript. Some investigators interviewed for this article felt that drug trials should be funded by industry but that design, implementation, data analysis, and publication should be controlled entirely by academic medical centers and investigators. The rise of the commercial sector — which reduces rather than enhances the independence of investigators — appears to be moving drug trials in the opposite direction.
