[Foundation-l] Funding Sources of Medical Research, was Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing...

[Andreas Kolbe]

--- On Tue, 2/11/10, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 3:36 AM, 
> <WJhonson at aol.com>
> wrote:
> >..
> > There have been plenty of studies on drugs, which were
> not paid for, by
> > anyone with a vested monetary interest in changing the
> drug's market outlook.
> > Being flippant as John was, hardly forwards the
> conversation.
> 
> The point I was making is that there is a lot of different
> types of
> research, funded by different groups with different
> agendas.
> 
> The PLOS Medicine article is based on a dataset of 78
> interventional
> studies, 81 observational studies, and only 47 scientific
> reviews.
> Also, they do not dissect the data based on the
> reputability of the
> publishing venue.
> 
> We should only use peer-reviewed research published in
> reputable
> journals, which eliminates vast quantities of 'research'.



We have had a number of red herrings and strawmen in this discussion so 
far:

1. That this is about editors' POV pushing. 

-- It isn't in my case. I don't edit this topic area. What I am concerned 
   about is that we do not appear to follow the publication ethics of
   the best journalistic and scholarly sources in this field.

2. That this is an issue associated with poorly sourced studies, and would 
   be resolved by making sure we use reputable sources.

-- This is about peer-reviewed research in the best journals, like The 
   Lancet, JAMA, and so forth. The editors of these journals decided that, 
   as a fundamental point of publishing ethics, they would disclose  
   conflict-of-interest information in all biomedical research articles. 
   The editors of these journals felt this was vital to safeguard the
   credibility "of the journal, the authors, and of science itself".

3. That this is only about individual studies, which shouldn't be used as 
   sources anyway, and that the problem is resolved automatically by using
   systematic reviews.

-- The editors of JAMA, The Lancet, etc. have specifically pointed out -
   http://www.icmje.org/ethical_4conflicts.html - that "Disclosure of such 
   relationships is also important in connection with editorials and review 
   articles". In other words, reviews are as subject to conflicts of 
   interest as clinical trials. In addition, our guidelines allow citation 
   of individual studies, and many are in fact cited, without available
   conflict-of-interest information included.

4. That this standard is about scholarly publishing, and doesn't apply to 
   us as encyclopedists/journalists.

-- The "gold standard" for journalism is the same as for scholarly
   publishing: If you cite researchers or studies, disclose their 
   conflicts of interests.

5. That this would inflate the article by adding extraneous detail.

-- We are typically talking about the addition of four words: "sponsored by 
   the manufacturer", "funded by the British Heart Foundation", etc.

6. That reliable sources mentioning such research do not mention funding,
   and that therefore we shouldn't either.

-- Many do. Some that do not have been severely criticised for it.

7. That this would lead editors to add further extraneous POV detail.

-- This is addressed by existing policies and guidelines, which require 
   that cited sources should directly address the article topic. In 
   addition, disclosing conflicts of interest as a matter of course is 
   likely to help placate editors concerned about research bias, thereby 
   reducing the number of disputes initiated by such editors.

8. That this would lead to our having to report funding sources for 
   research in other areas, such as computing.

-- We take our cues from what reliable sources do. There would be no basis 
   for requiring editors to report funding of cited computing studies, 
   unless there were a well-defined publishing ethics standard in 
   computing, similar to the publishing standard established for biomedical 
   research. 

These ethics standards serve the ideal of communicating reliable 
knowledge to readers. This is one of the ideals that the Foundation was 
built upon. They are also expressly designed to protect and enhance the 
reputation of the publication that provides this information. While our 
reputation will never be able to compare to those of top medical journals,
I see no reason why we should fail to take reasonable and feasible steps to 
protect it to the extent that we can, following the example of the best 
sources.

Andreas