Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14776

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Blumenstyk G.
Declarations of dependence
The Australian 2001 May 23

Full text:

Academic scientists who conduct industry-sponsored research may find themselves listed in a new online database. Database sponsors say it is designed to lift secrecy that surrounds research and sometimes leads to conflicts of interest.
The site made its debut last week with listings of corporate affiliations for more than 1100 researchers. Backers say they expect to triple the number of entries by the end of the year. The site also lists industry financing received by dozens of non-profit organisations.
The site is produced by the Integrity in Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington, DC.
The project’s mission, according to its site is to ‘safeguard science and the public welfare from the corruptive effects of industry’s influence”.
Nonetheless, developers say it is not intended as a black list but as a research tool for journalists, activists, government agencies and others.
With journal editors and ethicists calling for greater disclosure of researcher’s corporate ties, the database is meant to be “part of what we hope is the new culture of openness”, says project director Ronald Collins.
To develop the listings, researchers culled journals, congressional transcripts, newspaper articles and resumés. All entries were vetted by libel lawyers.
Collins says the project also intends to use more aggressive tactics, such as filing Freedom of Information Act requests with universities and government agencies to broaden the scope of listings.
The database is searchable by a name, a topic, a university or a company; visitors to the site cannot browse through all the names.
An introduction to the database emphasizes that corporate financing is not in itself improper and notes that “a company has every right to seek professional advice and that may involve compensating professors or other experts”.
The introduction notes that the entries include only partial information about researchers and warns users that they should not assume that someone who is not on the list does not receive corporate support.
The database may create more scepticism about industry-financed scientists, Collins allows, but that’s not necessarily bad. “My attitude is, if there is nothing to hide, there is nothing to hide,” he says.
For years, he adds, academic scientists have been able to have the best of both world: “They take industry money and still insist that they are detached, neutral and uncompromised and unsullied.”
One scientist who appears in the database, however, warns that people who use it should also consider other factors.
“Context is really important,” says Aviva Must, associate professor of community health at Tufts University. She is listed for receiving financial support from Roche Laboratories and from the Weight Watchers Foundation.
Must, who says the money from Roche financed research on what doctors knew about the health dangers of obesity. Roche, which sells anti-obesity drugs, had a market-based motivations for financing her study. But with her own interest in preventative approaches, the work was also helpful to her in exploring what clinicians understood about the effects of obesity.
“I don’t feel dirty for having taken money for doing that,” she says.
The Weight Watchers money was used to fill a short lapse in grant financing from the National Institutes of Health during an 11-year study on metabolic, behavioural and dietetic risk factors in girls. “We had 197 girls and no money,” she says. Weight Watchers provided less than US $100,000 ($188.680). The NIH support amounted to several million dollars. Must appeared in the database because the journal articles about the research included disclosures about the industry support.