OK, I will modify my statement to read:
How is ghostwriting different from the scenario when an “individual” engages freelance content writers for his/her blog, takes the copyright from the writer and posts the content as his/her own? In digital marketing, with persons who are too busy to write content for their own blogs, this is very common.Even in music, fiction and non-fiction industry.
“While a natural or physical person earning an academic degree in his or her own name claims that his or her submission is the fruit of his or her own intellectual labor to prove his or her qualification.”
Here I think we need to make a distinction between thinking, planning and doing an experiment / study and the process of writing the paper. Thinking, planning and doing an experiment / study is the real fruit of “own intellectual labor” which proves his or her qualification. Writing is a one part of the whole process. Probably more papers are rejected due to poor study design than due to bad writing. If a person can thinking, plan and do an experiment / study; why not pay someone else to write it, if that person can not and he/she has the money to pay for it?
Ghost writing is frowned upon in medicine, when it is common in other fields, is probably due to its use by pharmaceutical companies to promote their products. But that is more of of a ghost-writer guest-write nexus.
The practice of writing papers is necessary, even essential for young scholars – as it is a LEARNING ACTIVITY (P Udoma above), and practice makes a man perfect. It needs knowing the study inside-out, creativity, clear concepts, which help in the long run.
It is interesting to note from Wikipedia – A 2009 New York Times article estimated that 11% of New England Journal of Medicine articles, 8% of JAMA, Lancet and PLoS Medicine articles, 5% of Annals of Internal Medicine articles and 2% of Nature Medicine were ghost written.
So, high profile authors, publishing in high profile journals use ghost writers!!!
