Liars in lab coats.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Brief article

As you may know, it has become all too common for prominent medical school professors to put their names on medical journal articles actually written by employees of pharmaceutical or medical device manufacturers. Senator Charles Grassley recently asked the top medical schools what they are doing to stop the practice. Duke replied, "Severe and/or repeated offenses will result in formal disciplinary action," leaving us to guess what constitutes severe and just what the disciplinary action would be--or, for that matter, why it would require repeated offenses to justify any punishment.

When asked if the schools saw any difference between the professors' behavior and plagiarism by a student, the University of...