Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17493

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: Electronic Source

Edwards J
Medical Journals: Still Too Lazy to ID Pharma-Funded Research
BNet 2010 Mar 24
http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/10007359/in-the-lazy-world-of-medical-journals-pharma-funding-often-goes-unnoticed/

Full text:

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is taking heat today in an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association that describes a “disturbing example of inappropriate conduct” in studies for the company’s diabetes drug Avandia. Much of which it deserves.

Still, the company might well respond, “Journal, heal thyself!” Since neither JAMA nor other medical journals have a spotless track record when it comes to authors failing to disclose they were on company payrolls.

JAMA’s editorial calls for independent researchers to oversee all studies funded by drug companies to ensure that the data can be checked by someone not on the company payroll. JAMA already requires authors to disclose all payments when the publish in its pages.

These ideas are fine, but the gatekeepers here are the journal editors, not the drug companies. And journals keep publishing studies by researchers who have failed to disclose that they were paid by drug companies. JAMA itself was caught doing this in March 2009, and the authors of today’s editorial – Catherine D. DeAngelis and Phil B. Fontanarosa – responded by insulting the academic who pointed it out. Then, JAMA instituted a policy demanding silence from everyone involved whenever an allegation of undisclosed conflict was made. JAMA then rescinded, or at least hid, its “silence while we investigate” policy.

More broadly, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 71.2% of authors fail to properly disclose their conflicts of interest. So the problem is widespread. When it comes to GSK and Avandia specifically, doctors on the company payroll were found in a British Medical Journal study to be more likely to say favorable things about the drug.

And the problem doesn’t end there. Editors at academic archives and libraries fail to remove (or at least add addenda to) studies that were ghostwritten with drug company money. Ghostwriters are rarely listed as actual study authors. And medical schools, which generate thousands of studies every year, mostly don’t prohibit their professors from having their articles drafted by drug company ghostwriters.

While JAMA’s new urgings are admirable, it’s unfair to suggest that GSK and its ilk created this ethical cesspool. Lazy journal editors have gone along with it for years. And “lazy” is the correct word here: It only took a few Google searches for BNET to confirm that one doctor whose articles recommended antipsychotic drugs for preschoolers had failed to disclose her ties to companies that make those drugs.

Luckily, President Obama’s health reform act contains a partial solution. It includes the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which will require companies to list in a national database all their payments to physicians. One that’s in place, there will no longer be any excuse for a writer to fail to list his or her conflicts – or for journal editors to not check them.