Ghost and Guest Authors: You Can't Always Trust Who You Read

Extract

Clinicians are expected to practice medicine based on the best available evidence. Medical school and post-graduate training provide a foundation for practice, but medicine is constantly evolving. In order to fulfill the obligations of highest quality clinical care and professionalism, physicians are required to participate in life-long learning. The most frequently used resources for continuing medical education (CME) are peer-reviewed medical journals and accredited CME courses. The quality and reliability of information presented in these educational formats are of paramount importance. Without attempting to assign a relative value of meetings over papers, the latter may be more influential over longer periods of time because of their permanency and accessibility.

In addition to original research, most medical journals publish systematic and narrative reviews that help clinicians stay current. In such reviews experts collect, distill, and evaluate original research articles from which they make recommendations that can significantly influence clinical practice. Such reviews are only as good as the publications upon which they are based.