If you're working on a major disease which is popular for funding from both government and private sources, why, oh why, would you take money from the one group of people whose funds will totally discredit your work? The linked story is about a lung cancer researcher who did just that.
Do you suppose she thought to herself, Other people may be tainted by taking ciggie dollars, but I am smarter than that? I can see as how that would happen, but c'mon, we all know hubris is a classic Greek tragic flaw. Duh, avoid those!
But also shame on NEJM for not looking into this more closely. If authors disclose their financial conflicts, then shouldn't we, um, check those out before publishing their papers? What's the point in forcing people to declare their financial conflicts if we're not going to examine their meaning?
15 years ago
2 comments:
My university had a big debate about accepting money from tobacco companies a while ago. The administration solicited feedback from faculty about it, but I don't think I ever heard about the final decision.
I suppose just because the study was funded by tobacco companies doesn't mean that CT scans won't save lives, but still.... As for journals checking up on conflict-of-interest declarations, well, they can't even enforce the rules on free sharing of published reagents!
This knee-jerk reaction really perplexes me. We just got a round of this with the Edie Londen flap at UCLA too. There seems to be an element that thinks that any research support that derives from tobacco sales is bad, whether this might be a result of settlement monies to the state or a direct payment from PhillipMorris.
I'm not naive about the ways that companies might influence outcome. But the point should be to assess on a case by case basis whether in fact the research was affected by the funding source. Do you know the agreements by which the support was awarded to the researcher? How do you know that the researcher wasn't completely independent?
"will totally discredit"? Don't you see how arrogantly circular this is?
This foundation was set up apparently for early detection of lung cancer. I am having difficulty understanding how this, and the scientists area of research are negatively affected by the funding source.
I mean, what? Early detection of cancer might allow treatment / smoking discontinuation resulting in fewer nastiest-case-scenarios available to demonstrate how evil smoking is? oo, big win for tobacco there! is this the rationale for objecting to this situation?
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