Fw: Scientists Often Mum About Ties to Industry

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From: " ilena rose " <ilena@...>

Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 3:54 AM

Subject: Scientists Often Mum About Ties to Industry

>

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/25/health/25CONF.html?searchpv=site01 & pagewan

ted=print>

>

> April 25, 2001

>

> Scientists Often Mum About Ties to Industry

>

> By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

>

> ASHINGTON, April 24 -- Scientists who report research findings are

> expected to divulge any financial ties that might influence their work.

> But often they do not, according to the first comprehensive analysis of

> disclosure policies in science and medical journals.

>

> In reviewing 61,134 scholarly articles published in 181 academic journals

> in 1997, researchers at Tufts University and the University of California

> at Los Angeles found that just one-half of 1 percent detailed personal

> financial interests, including consulting arrangements, honorariums,

> expert witness fees, company equity and stock, and patents. All of those

> few disclosures appeared in just a third of the 181 journals.

>

> It is possible, of course, that scientists have few conflicts to report.

> But experts say previous studies have shown that as many as half of all

> academic researchers consult with industry, and roughly 8 percent have

> stakes in biomedical companies related to their research.

>

> So the more likely explanation, said Dr. Sheldon Krimsky, a professor of

> urban and environmental policy at Tufts and the study's lead author, is

> that journal editors " are not forceful enough " in requiring disclosure,

> " or there is widespread disobedience " of their rules.

>

> Dr. Krimsky's study appears in the April issue of Science and Engineering

> Ethics, a journal that was not part of his survey.

>

> It comes at a time of increasing concern about the effects of

> commercialization of science. And the findings are not surprising, said

> Dr. Blumenthal, director of the Institute for Health Policy, a

> research center at Massachusetts General Hospital.

>

> Dr. Blumenthal, who studies the ties between academia and industry, said

> that scientists who failed to report conflicts generally " believe that

> they are people of integrity, and they feel they can separate their work

> from their financial interests. "

>

> But research suggests otherwise, Dr. Blumenthal said. Studies have found

> that scientists with financial ties to the companies whose products they

> study are more likely to write favorably about those products.

>

> The issue of financial disclosure has been in the news of late; last year,

> the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine apologized to readers

> for violating their own conflict-of-interest policies by publishing

> reviews of the medical literature on drug therapies despite the reviewers'

> financial relationships with the companies marketing the drugs.

>

> Dr. M. Drazen, The Journal's editor in chief, said that persuading

> scientists to divulge personal financial data was not easy. " We have to

> work at it, " he said. When researchers ignore inquiries about conflicts,

> he said, many journals, including his own, assume none exist.

>

> Dr. Drazen said editors of journals around the world would meet in May and

> discuss whether researchers should be required to submit either a

> disclosure of conflict or what he called an " active negative disclosure, "

> -- a declaration that the researcher is free of financial conflict.

>

>

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