Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18356

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: Journal Article

Chapman S
The odium of industry engagement
BMJ 2010 July 7; 341:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/341/jul07_3/c3575

Abstract:

The risks of odium associated with declaring competing interests have become such that many researchers are now intimidated into refusing industry engagement. I have refused for a decade as I value my independence. But this is not a healthy development. Widespread disengagement with vaccine producers would be like dietitians refusing to have anything to do with the food industry which supplies almost all of the very items that dietitians urge be consumed more.

You argue that those with any industry engagement should be barred from guideline development,1 2 meaning only experts who voluntarily assist industries should be considered truly impartial, or those subscribing to the view that any industry engagement is inherently corrupting of independence. The reduction to the absurd of such radical separatism would be a peculiar kind of hypocrisy where we all left industries to get on with developing breakthroughs and then promoted and advised the use of the . . .