The “Monsanto papers” and the nature of ghostwriting and related practices in contemporary peer review scientific literature

ABSTRACT

The Monsanto company – now acquired by Bayer – has been accused of ghostwriting articles within peer review literature, with the goal of using influential names to front its content in defence of the herbicide Roundup. Here, I conduct a detailed analysis of three Monsanto review articles and a five-article journal supplement for which detailed information from company emails is publicly available following litigation over Roundup. All the articles had external, but not Monsanto authors, and ghostly practices including ghost authorship, corporate ghost authorship and ghost management were evident in their development. There was clear evidence of ghostwriting – that is, drafting of the manuscript by non-authors – in only two cases. I found no evidence of undeserving authorship among the external authors. The articles complied with the disclosure requirements of their journals, save for the journal supplement. While crude ghostwriting did occur, much of the literature involved subtler practices through which Monsanto exercised control over content, while the attribution of the articles downplayed the company’s role – and correspondingly aggrandized that of the external authors. Such practices are widespread within industry journal literature and are the responsibility of byline authors and journals as well as corporations. I discuss these cultural problems and consider remedies.

KEYWORDS:

• Ghostwriting
• ghost authorship
• guest authorship
• ghost management
• corporate science
• Monsanto

Disclosure statement

In 2018 I was paid by lawyers taking action against Monsanto to review selected e-mails relating to the company’s alleged ghostwriting. My work was not used in litigation.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.