2006 Schweinerei
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Vol. 15, No. 4, 2006 ‘Schweinerei’ Vol. 15, No. 4, 2006 TheWrite Stuff EMWA Executive Committee Journal insights President: TheWrite Stuff is the official publication of the European Medical Michelle Derbyshire Writers Association. It is issued 4 times a year and aims to provide MD Writing Services, EMWA members with relevant, informative and interesting articles and Herfststraat 25A, news addressing issues relating to the broad arena of medical writing. B2400 Mol, Belgium. We are open to contributions from anyone whose ideas can complement Tel: +32 (0)14 322832, GSM: +32 (0) 486 245908 these aims. [email protected] Articles or ideas should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief (see below) or another member of the Editorial Board. Vice-President & Programme Manager: Julia Forjanic Klapproth Trilogy Writing & Consulting GmbH Subscriptions Paul-Ehrlich-Strasse 26 Subscriptions are included in EMWA membership fees. By writing to 60596 Frankfurt am Main, Germany [email protected] non-members can subscribe at an annual rate of: Tel.: (+49) 69 255 39511, Fax.: (+49) 69 255 39499 [email protected] • €35 within Europe • €50 outside Europe Immediate Past President: Instructions for contributors Adam Jacobs • TheWrite Stuff typically publishes articles of 700–2800 words Dianthus Medical Ltd although longer pieces or those with tables or graphics will be considered. Lombard Business Park • All articles are subject to editing and revision by the Editorial Board. 8 Lombard Road London, SW19 3TZ, UK Any changes will be discussed with the author before publication. Tel: (+44) 20 8543 9229, Fax: (+44) 20 8543 9885 • Submissions should include the full address of the author, including the [email protected] telephone and fax numbers and email address. 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EMWA Annual Spring Conference 2007 plus a Focus on Medical Communications Today The upcoming annual Spring conference is starting to take shape. The always superb selection of workshops from the Professional Development Programme will be offering: • Foundation and advanced training in all aspects of medical writing. • Workshops covering regulatory topics and fundamental medical writing skills. In addition, the conference will have a Medical Communications theme. There will be plenary sessions, discussion panels and seminars to specifically explore hot topics in the world of communications today: • Product Branding (with plenary session by Beverley Law from Dew Gibbons, London) • Medical Journalism and the Press • Science Communication • Writing for Patients (with plenary session by Liz Woolf, Head of CancerHelp UK) So block your calendars now and come to this conference… there will be something for everybody! See you in Vienna 2007! Julia Forjanic Klapproth EMWA Vice President The Journal of the European Medical Writers Association 112 Vol. 15, No. 4, 2006 TheWrite Stuff From the editor's desk: Cheating is a ‘Schweinerei’ By Elise Langdon-Neuner So, why are there lots of pigs on the cover of TWS? These cud- Summerlin’s resort to deception. This would explain why dly toys introduce a thorny topic: cheating. People who cheat an intelligent man might have thought he could get away annoy those who don’t. In German-speaking countries, those with manipulating his data. He was confident that sooner or who don’t cheat would most probably express their indigna- later he or workers elsewhere would obtain confirmatory tion on discovering the deeds of those who do as a results. Thus he closed the door on the real truth. ‘Schweinerei’1. The equivalent expression in English would be ‘swinery’ in its figurative context —long fallen into disuse. Barry Drees describes in his article in this issue of TWS how he was pressured by the career structure in science and No area of human endeavour by work conditions in his laboratory, to risk cheating. He is free from cheating, not Why do people cheat? believed that he would be able to make amends later. When even where seeking the truth things turned out otherwise he was faced with a moral is the maxim as it should be dilemma. The unacceptable circumstances that put him in in science and medical writing. But to tackle the problem this position played a role in his decision to switch to a of cheating it is important to establish whether cheating is career in medical writing. an intrinsic human characteristic, impossible to hinder in those prone to cheat, or whether external circumstances Increasingly medical writers are also facing pressure to drive people to cheat. Opinions differ. Two authors, Vedran manipulate data, and to unethically ‘cherry-pick’ or ghost- Katavic, a research integrity editor at a medical journal in write. The difficulties we face as medical writers in ‘being Croatia and Miguel Roig, a cognitive psychologist working honest’ are bravely pondered in Ursula Schoenberg’s arti- in New York, give their opinions in their articles in this cle in this issue. When Marilynn Larkin was pressured to issue of TWS. Both authors teach university students. rework two review articles she had written under contract for a medical communications company to position a prod- The case of the spotted mice illustrates the difficulty of uct more favourably, she asked the company to reduce her identifying the reason why a person cheats. In one of the fee and rewrite the drafts themselves [2]. Susanna Rees [3] most blatant frauds of recent years Dr William Summerlin and David Franklin [4] rank among other whistleblowers in touched up skin grafts with a felt-tip pen to simulate dark our profession. skin on white mice. Why did he do it and what made him Is the solution to these pressures for medical writers to take think he could get away with it? Summerlin claimed to on their employers by whistleblowing? Whistleblowers are have developed a procedure that overcame rejection of a exceptional people as I skin graft. This brought hope for an end to the laborious realised when I once had the process of transplanting pieces of a patient’s own skin, Should medical privilege of hearing Dr which has to be done over a long period and makes the writers blow the Graham Pink speak. Dr Pink patient vulnerable to loss of body fluids and to infection. exposed the Stockport Health However scientists in other laboratories who attempted to whistle? Authority (UK) in an article repeat these experiments were unable to confirm the published in The Guardian in results. Eventually Summerlin was exposed with the help April 1990. He had worked as a charge nurse on a geriatric of some of his immediate co-workers. Peter Medawar, who ward at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport. What he won the Nobel Prize for his work on tissue transplantation, reported to the press was the drastic understaffing of the suggests that Summerlin might have been a ‘bad apple’ [1]. ward at night, which resulted in inadequate care and in dis- There is an unproven charge that Summerlin cheated in tress to patients. He had first written to the chairman of the exams during his studies, which if established might sup- authority in August 1989. It was not until he had written port the idea of ‘intrinsic proneness’ mentioned above. But fruitlessly to local members of Parliament, the Regional Medawar also believes it is conceivable that Summerlin Health Authority, the Department of Health in London, the could actually have obtained positive results in his earlier national nurses’ professional body, the Secretary of State experiments if the mice had become muddled up in such a for Health and finally to the Prime Minister that he ulti- way that donors and recipients were closely related hybrids, mately turned to the press.