Once upon a time, the drug giant Wyeth Pharmaceuticals wanted to get some medical journal articles published that would emphasize the positives and de-emphasize the negatives about their hormone replacement drugs, Premarin and Prempro. For the sake of clarity, let’s call this “lying”.

What’s a poor drug giant to do? How about getting well-known medical school professors and researchers to submit HRT-flattering articles to medical journals, pretending that they are the sole authors instead of the  medical ghostwriters you hired who actually wrote them?

And thus a brilliant marketing scam is hatched.   Continue reading →