Jackie Marchington, Director of Global Operations, Caudex, and former member of GAPP, reflects on six years of responding to misleading articles about medical publications professionals.

Recorded 4 July 2018 at a MedComms Networking event in Oxford. Produced by NetworkPharma.tv

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ABSTRACT:

GAPP was founded in 2012 to defend the reputation of medical publications professionals by providing a timely, credible response to misleading, influential stories that assumed that ghost-writing of articles was still common – as it had been 10 years or more previously – and/or conflated ghost-writing with professional medical writing support or suggested that spin and selective reporting were the norm.

The GAPP team comprised five members who were passionate advocates for the profession, and who took 10-week turns leading the team and otherwise worked in a review/approval role. Members took responsibility for finding an appropriately qualified successor on exit. Trigger articles were alerted by active surveillance, though most came through referrals. The GAPP team made it their business to correct misinterpretation, cite third party guidance, refute anecdote with evidence and highlight current guidance and behaviour. GAPP published 50 responses to misleading articles during its six-year lifespan, along with four proactive articles. Happily, articles on ghost-writing saw a substantial decline over this time, with GAPP responding to only four articles in 2017. Misinformed and poorly researched articles are still being published, but they have been focusing less and less on professional medical writing, and the conversation about industry-funded research has been moving toward data disclosure and clinical trial transparency. GAPP stepped down on 2 May 2018 – though continues to maintain its website at http://gappteam.org.

Written by Penny Gray, Freelance Medical Writer

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We are building a library of free webcasts, like this one, for the global MedComms Community and others at http://www.networkpharma.tv and we’d welcome your suggestions for new topics and speakers.

Full details of this MedComms Networking event are at http://www.medcommsnetworking.com/event_040718.html

Jackie’s presentation (PDF format) is at http://www.medcommsnetworking.com/presentations/marchington_040718.pdf

Jackie’s Linkedin page is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackiemarchington/

More about Caudex can be found at http://www.caudex.com

More about the Global Alliance of Publication Professionals (GAPP) can be found at http://gappteam.org

Filming and technical direction by Mario Crispino, Freelance Cameraman & Editor

Editorial support by Penny Gray, Freelance Medical Writer

[For the avoidance of doubt: this video is intended to be freely accessible to all. Please feel free to share and use however you like. Cheers Peter Llewellyn, Director NetworkPharma Ltd and Founder of the MedComms Networking Community activity at http://www.medcommsnetworking.com]