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 .
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.
Dr.S.Venkatesan MD 