Senator Charles Grassley, a moderate conservative republican from Iowa, has been known for his medical research probes. On November 17th Grassley wrote to the top 10 medical schools asking what each school is doing about professors putting their names on ghostwritten articles in medical journals.

“Students are disciplined for not acknowledging that a paper they turned in was written by somebody else,” Mr. Grassley wrote. “But what happens when researchers at the same university publish medical studies without acknowledging that they were written by somebody else?” via NYTimes.com

A few weeks ago we wrote a summary about medical writing and we briefly touched on the controversy surrounding medical writing. Basically the lack of transparency is the core of the issue and Senator Grassley’s letter to the top medical schools specifically asks why plagiarism by professors is any different than plagiarism by students.

Sending letters that ask pointed questions is something Grassley has done several times in the past. In 2007 he sent letters to six tax-exempt ministries asking the ministries to divulge specific information about how their funds were used by the ministry heads. In 2008 Grassley alleged that Alan Schatzberg, the chair of psychiatry at Stanford University, had underreported his investments by over 5 million dollars. The medical schools have until December 8th to answer the letter stating their policies against dishonest ghostwriting.

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