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This Week in PLoS Medicine: Cost effective & accurate TB diagnoses; Ghostwriting perspectives

Image Credit: Nico Crisafulli

Four new articles were published this week in PLoS Medicine, including two fascinating Perspectives on the ghostwriting phenomenon in medical writing.

Madhukar Pai and colleagues conducted a cost-effectiveness study that shows sputum smear microscopy to be the most cost-effective test for active tuberculosis (TB) in India, and liquid culture plus microscopy to be more cost-effective for TB diagnosis than serological tests.

A systematic review and meta-analysis by Karen Steingart and colleagues confirms that commercially available serological tests do not provide an accurate diagnosis of tuberculosis.

Linda Logdberg, a medical ghostwriter for 11 years, provides a personal view of her former work and what she believes should be done about the problem of fraud in authorship.

Alastair Matheson argues that rather than obstructing industry, the current ICMJE authorship guidelines have become its preferred tool for misattributing authorship.

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