|
-------Original Message-------
Date: Friday, May 18,
2001 03:28:21 PM
Subject: Scientists
Often Mum About Ties to Industry
Orgone Biophysical Research Lab
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.orgonelab.org
Forwarded News
Item
Please copy and distribute to other interested individuals and
groups
**********
NY TIMES, April 25, 2001
Scientists
Often Mum About Ties to Industry
By SHERYL GAY
STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, 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 studys lead author, is
that
journal editors "are not forceful enough" in requiring disclosure,
"or
there is widespread disobedience" of their rules.
Dr. Krimskys
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. David 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.
Jeffrey M. Drazen, The Journals 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.
**********
OBRL News is a product
of the non-profit
Orgone Biophysical Research Lab
Greensprings
Research and Educational Center
PO Box 1148, Ashland, Oregon 97520
USA
http://www.orgonelab.org
|
