Declaration of conflicts of interest: a ‘crooked’ line towards scientific integrity

Excerpt

In 2003, Martin Tobin, as Editor-in-Chief of American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, introduced a policy on conflict of interest (COI) [1]. He expressed that a COI is “…a set of conditions in which professional judgement concerning a primary interest, such as the validity of research, might be influenced by a secondary interest, such as financial gain. The secondary interest is usually not illegitimate in itself, but it becomes a problem when it eclipses the primary interest. …a conflict of interest is a condition, not a behavior—being determined by circumstances, not by outcome. A conflict exists…when judgment might or might be perceived to be influenced… before any actual breach of trust, and irrespective of whether a breach of trust actually occurs”. The readers must know about financial ties with industry for them to determine whether the COI may have biased the presentation of the results: the declaration allows the reader to decide. Many other sources of bias, conscious or unconscious, exist in research but financial COI can be easily identified and quantified (note: the nature of the transaction characterizes a condition, not a behaviour). The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which had previously produced the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (1978), started in 2009 to use a common form to declare COI [2]. The principle of this declaration was to maintain “…public trust in the scientific process and the credibility of published articles...” [3]. Many journals had already developed policies regarding COI but the lack of uniformity made that individual authors could report different information to different journals. This was an important and welcome step. Fifteen years later, we ask did this improve integrity of research? …