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

[Andreas Kolbe]

John, by your rationale, every scholarly journal that follows defined 
ethics guidelines *requiring* that the funding be disclosed impugns the 
authors' integrity. Does it really? 

There is a difference between transparency and assumption of wrongdoing; 
and history is full of people who resisted transparency with similar 
arguments. It is like saying our politicians should not have to disclose 
their expenses, because asking them to do so implies an assumption of
wrongdoing on their part. There is no such assumption, but there is also
a recognition in society that transparency helps prevent abuse.

As for David's point, 

> Does not work for me,, because it
> unreasonably implies that references
> without it are not so funded.

ways around this can easily be found, if there is a will to do so. For 
example, if the funding field is left empty, it could be made to default to 
something like "no data available". 

Andreas


--- On Sun, 7/11/10, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>
> By flagging a piece of research as
> 'funding by ACME Big Pharma', we
> suggest that the research is somehow flawed, without
> clearly saying
> it, without any evidence, and without sources that support
> our
> suggestion.
> 
> This is akin to adding categories which are not
> unambiguously
> supported by prose and references in the body of an
> article.
> 
> We should not cast sources into a bad light by suggesting
> their
> research is clouded by the funding unless reliable sources
> have said
> so first.
> 
> Often the problem is _not_ that the research which is
> published is
> bad, but that unfavourable research is not published. 
> In this case,
> casting a shadow over the published work does not help the
> reader, and
> does not impact upon the unpublished research.
> 
> Wikipedia should not be used as a platform to attack the
> systemic
> problem of industry funded research in some areas of
> medicine.
> 
> We have articles about this topic; that should be the
> extent of the platform.
> 
> Respected journals have occasionally been caught out, and
> they are
> becoming more astute about checking the submissions. 
> It is
> appropriate that journals expect that researchers provide
> information
> to _them_ about potential conflict of interests, so it can
> be
> available for peer-reviewers both before and after
> publishing.  Where
> it is failing, journalists and researchers need to
> highlight the
> problems, and journal editors need to improve their
> processes to
> prevent the problem, or at least ensure that the
> researchers have
> breached their policies when the problems are exposed.
> 
> --
> John Vandenberg
> 
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