Medical Writing and Scientific Communication

Clear, sourced content that preserves scientific meaning.

Medical writing and scientific communication is the work of turning scientific data into a readable text. Its quality is measured not by how smoothly the text reads but by how visible the responsibility behind it is.

Authorship and contribution

Under the ICMJE criteria, authorship requires four conditions met together: substantial contribution to the work, drafting or critically revising the text, approval of the final version, and acceptance of accountability for the whole. That framework names two common failures: listing someone who did not contribute on the basis of position, and omitting someone who made a substantial contribution.

Declaring writing support

Receiving professional medical writing support is not in itself a problem; leaving it invisible is. Good Publication Practice directs that the provider of such support and its funding source be stated.

How the language is built

The language of a text is itself a declaration. Writing the result of a study that cannot establish causation in causal language changes the interpretation without changing the data. In an observational study, "was observed to be lower" rather than "reduced" is a question of accuracy, not of style.

In the same way, the result of a single study is not conveyed as settled knowledge; subgroup findings that were not pre-specified are presented as hypothesis-generating; and results from two studies never compared directly are not set against each other.

Declaring relationships

Disclosure covers more than direct payment: consultancy, speaker fees, research funding and non-financial relationships fall within it. The test is whether a relationship could reasonably bear on a reader's appraisal; where there is doubt, declaring is the correct course.

A culture of correction

When an error is found in a published text, publishing the correction openly reinforces credibility. Content altered quietly turns the alteration itself into the problem.