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Posts Tagged ‘conflict of interest’

Trust deficit in medical research and Journals : Need for an unprecedented transparency in declaring conflicts of Interest. 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 25, 2025|

An Awakening Call to the Guardians of Medical Science

Dr. Venkatesan Sangareddi MD, Former professor of cardiology, Madras medical college,Chennai .India

Medical science remains a cornerstone of human progress, and what we have achieved in the last 100 years is unprecedented. Every one of us is aware that the trust placed in medical research is sacred. Also, the medical profession is expected to remain noble as long as human beings exist. However, as in all walks of life, there must be trade-offs to any positives. Yes, this trust has increasingly become vulnerable, threatened by the pervasive and often subtle influence of conflicts of interest (COI). This is especially explicit in the current medical research landscape.

While the scientific community has made strides in acknowledging and requiring disclosure of COIs, particularly from authors , the measures are proving insufficient. There is a big irony sitting right across us. It is made to look, as if conflicts of Interest (COI) exist only with the authors.

The following article written by the author (Ref 1) calls for an  awakening to every medical journal publishers, regardless of their prestige or impact factor, to recognize their vulnerability . We are expected to adopt a new paradigm of transparency in declaring COI, that extends to every participant in the publication process, including the scientific or ethical committies that approve the study ,the peer reviewers, the publishers and finally to the industries that fund the research.

Reference

1,Click here to download the full paper: A caution: It is a fairly lengthy article. (15 minutes read) Hope the suggestions made in the article are not labeled as unrealistic and possibly crazy as well.

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What is the purpose of declaration of conflict of interest in medical research ?

Posted in bio ethics, Cardiology - Clinical, cardiology -Therapeutics, cardiology-ethics, Cardiology-Land mark studies, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 10, 2008| Leave a Comment »

                                                 It is now mandatory for all  journals  to declare the  conflict  of interest by the authors  who are involved in medical research .The purpose apparently is to make all transactions or links  between the researchers and their funding agencies transparent .Even major journals  do not go beyond this . Some ensure it , to appear in the first page of  the article.

 What does the the journals tend to  convey to the reader by publishing the conflicts of interest ?

  •  Does it  mean the article in question  may have a bias or indeed have a bias  ?  and readers are warned  hereby !
  •  Do they send across a message  that the  article may not be really a genuine one and the judgement is left to the the consumers of the articles ?

How often a journal article is rejected purely on the basis of  conflicts of interest ?

Most of  journal articles are rejected  for poor methodology, statistical analysis and so forth .We don’t know how often a paper is rejected  due to a conflict issue per se.If this could happen ,bulk  of drug trials would face a torrid time from the editors.

Why , even the leading scientific  journals never indulge in grading the significance of the conflict ?

Here is an example .

accomplish

nejm1

The much hyped drug trial on Hypertension “ACCOMPLISH”  was published in the  world’s most prestigious medical journal recently .It  left  it to the readers to  have their  own assessment  on the conflict issue.

  The consequence of not , grading and investigating  about the conflicts could have  serious  global health  implications both financially and academically .

This study was designed, formulated, completed and published  with a single hidden aim of neutralising the land mark trial  of ALLHAT which recommended diuretics as a first line drug in HT.Apparently diuretics are very  cheap  , effective  generic drugs.

 Is it a scientific rule  that  the  latest evidence  ,  should always prevail over the older evidence ?

No. Science can never have such a rule ! The question is how good and genuine is the evidence.
Just because an evidence is current , it does not  attain a scientific sanctity !

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