Who actually wrote the studies

The manuscript carried 22 names. Someone else wrote the first draft.

The first draft of the manuscript published as Keller et al. 2001 was prepared by Sally K. Laden of Scientific Therapeutics Information, Inc., a medical communications firm, under a fixed-price contract to SmithKline Beecham.

The draft's title page reads: "Manuscript prepared by: Sally K. Laden, M.S., Scientific Therapeutics Information, Inc." and "Manuscript prepared for: James P. McCafferty, SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals". That title page does not appear on the submitted version.

The contract of 3 April 1998: fixed price US$17,250. The scope, verbatim: "STI editors will write up to six drafts of the manuscripts with the sixth being the journal submission draft." And the review sequence, written into the contract: "Draft I is the initial draft that will be reviewed by the sponsor" — the sponsor only.

The published paper carried 22 named authors — 20 academic clinicians and two SmithKline Beecham employees — and credited Laden only with "editorial assistance", without disclosing that a contractor paid by the sponsor had written the text.

The reanalysis of the study's own data is on the sister site, in Part C of psydrugs.online. Here the question is only who held the pen.

[31] UCSF Industry Documents Library, POGO Investigation on Ghostwriting Collection, case "Paxil, C.P.Ct.PA", exhibits npfw0217 et seq. · [32] Keller MB et al., J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2001;40(7):762-772

Twenty-five years on: a notice of concern, not a retraction

In its June 2026 issue the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry published an Expression of Concern formally linked to Keller et al. 2001.

We have not been able to obtain the text of the notice and therefore cannot say what it states. An Expression of Concern is a holding notice — not a finding of misconduct and not a retraction. As of this writing, the 2001 article has not been retracted or corrected.

We say so explicitly because it circulates that "Study 329 was retracted" or that "a court found it fraudulent". Neither is true.

[33] "Expression of Concern: Efficacy of Paroxetine in the Treatment of Adolescent Major Depression", J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2026;65(6):852, DOI 10.1016/j.jaac.2025.09.032

Two of fifty-five papers disclosed that someone else wrote them

First, what we do not know. We are not aware of any study measuring how much of the psychiatric literature is ghostwritten. No such figure exists, and any percentage offered for it should be treated as invented. We write this even though it deprives the section of its most striking number.

What is documented is narrower. Healy and Cattell examined a status document prepared for Pfizer by the agency Current Medical Directions on 29 January 1999, covering 85 planned or published articles on sertraline. Of the 55 that had reached print by early 2001, only two disclosed writing assistance from someone not listed as an author — and every clinical-trial result among them favoured the sponsor.

The study does not establish that any particular article was ghostwritten. Its own figure is that 23 of the 85 "possibly originated" with the agency — and "possibly" does not become "measured".

Conflict of interest of a source that suits us: David Healy has acted as a paid expert witness for plaintiffs in antidepressant litigation. That does not invalidate the documents he presented; it means he is not a neutral observer, and we write it down.

[34] Healy D, Cattell D. "Interface between authorship, industry and science in the domain of therapeutics", Br J Psychiatry 2003;183:22-27, DOI 10.1192/bjp.183.1.22