Medical Journals To Publish New Conflict Rules
6 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 14th, 2009 // 4:06 pm
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors is about to demand tougher - and uniform - disclosure of conflicts of interest by researchers, according to The Wall Street Journal. At least a dozen publications have agreed to use a new, standardized disclosure form, which will be phased in over the next several months.
The requirements will go beyond existing disclosure rules at many journals to include items such as financial relationships involving spouses, partners or minor children, the paper writes. Another requirement includes disclosure of nonfinancial conflicts, such as religious and political affiliations in order to alert readers to potential biases in research.
The ICMJE hope to address complaints about the existing disclosure system (see ICMJE editorial here). The Journal notes that some researchers say differing policies are confusing and lead to inadvertent omissions, while critics complain a potential conflict may be listed in one publication but not another. The new form will be published this week by all of ICMJE members, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association. The group is urging medical journals that aren’t members to adopt the form.
The form lists various financial relationships that must be reported going back three years - consulting work; honoraria; expert testimony; grants; payments for manuscript preparation; patents and royalties. There is also a requirement for non-financial disclosures, such as a researcher who also serves as the unpaid chairman of an advocacy group for a disease, the paper writes. Former New England Journal of Medicine editor Jerome Kassirer, who has called for better reporting of financial conflicts, tells the paper this requirement was “a little excessive.”
Nathan
This is great — it’s about time that “nonfinancial conflicts” are highlighted. I hope that this catches on throughout the scientific community.
Justice in Michigan
Agree with Nathan. Among other reasons, unpaid advocates may well be leading organizations that are themselves funded, in one way or other, by a variety of profit and non-profit sources, interest groups, think tanks, political orgs, etc..
The “gray area” might be what most often motivates research bias aside from money–professional advancement, etc.. Hard to see how that dimension could be “disclosed”–”I wasn’t paid anything, but getting this puppy in NEJM will really decorate my CV.”
cliffintokyo
‘Nathan’ and ‘Michigan’:
‘The scientific community’ and ‘motivation’….hmmm.
Seems to me that only financial conflicts of interest can really be evaluated objectively; all other potential conflicts are probably subjective to a degree which cannot be logically unravelled.
Medicinal chemistry and biomedical research (to mention just two examples I am reasonably conversant with), appear to thrive on the bias of (self-interest) advocacy and the need to compete:
“our reaction/ synthetic route/ druggable target/ biomarker/ etc., is better/ more relevant/ etc., than prof/company X’s”
atlex
I generally agree that it is hard to specifically identify easily enumerated motivations (money, gifts, etc.). So I don’t see how they can be accurately captured in a disclosure statement (eg, “if I get this and 4 other papers published my odds of receiving tenure group substantially.”). However, we must be willing to acknowledge that these nonmonetary incentives can be as powerful or more so than money. And, just because someone is not being paid by a pharma doesn’t necessarily make them an unbiased source.
cliffintokyo
Atlex:
Does your last sentence imply that everyone paid by pharma is biased?
This is a profoundly disturbing thought….
Atlex
Cliffintokyo, I don’t at all mean to imply that. Unfortunately, the standard belief is that if a pharma company provided any monetary support to a researcher or prescriber no matter how much and how long ago, that research or prescriber is somehow biased for the rest of his or her career. My point is that there are many motivations that inject bias, and that money is only one of these.