Money matters too much says editor of prestigious medical journal

Aug 9 2006

The editor of a top medical journal says money, and money alone, is having an "unethical influence" on medical science and by so-doing she has upped the pressure on scientists to fully disclose commercial ties by urging the employers of those who don't comply to probe them for possible conflicts of interest.

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association - JAMA, says that as magazines cannot get together and blacklist authors who fail to disclose commercial ties because of antitrust considerations, the only tools editors are left with in enforcing policies on full reporting of financial disclosures is an investigation by the deans of the authors' (academic or medical) institutions.

Because of the importance of the influence of money in science and in light of recent incidents involving authors' failure to disclose all of their potential conflicts of interest to JAMA, Dr. DeAngelis has written an editorial on the subject.

DeAngelis says her journal's peer review of studies, analyzes statistical findings independently which has led some studies to be submitted to other journals.

DeAngelis says it is nigh impossible to root out conflicts of interest when companies geared to profits often provide the funding to discover, test and market advances in medicine.

She says researchers' honest disclosure of the financial support they have received in medical journals that publish their findings, is information the public must have in order to discern the necessary and honest interests of for-profit companies from the potentially corrupting influence of commercial interests.

DeAngelis believes companies can exert inappropriate influence on research via control of study data and statistical analysis, ghostwriting, managing all or most aspects of manuscript preparation, and dictating to investigators the journal to which they should submit their manuscripts.

Last month DeAngelis announced more restrictive author disclosure requirements amid a spate of cases where financial ties were said to have been unintentionally omitted, and is now insisting that authors disclose all their financial interests that might be perceived to have an influence on submitted research or editorial perspectives.

The journal also published an apology from researchers who had failed to disclose numerous drug company ties in a study that concluded women taking antidepressant drugs risk relapsing if they stop taking the drugs after becoming pregnant.

The editorial can be seen online at http://jama.ama-assn.org/.