Journal Editors Urged to Disclose Conflicts of Interest

[Guest guest]

It should go way beyond just disclosing financial ties.

 

They ought to clean up their act where " junk " science is no longer a problem.

Not just that there is a possiblity of it due to economic ties. It should no

longer be acceptable in scientific areas.

 

It really isn't " junk " science, that was always called lieing and fraud before.

 

Frank

 

 

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200308211.html

 

Journal Editors Urged to Disclose Conflicts of Interest

 

Nature and Science Failing To Disclose Authors' Financial Ties

 

The journals Nature and Science aren’t reliably disclosing their authors’

financial ties to drug and biotechnology companies, according to more than 30

scientists and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). CSPI and

the scientists called on the editors of the journals to establish more robust

policies for disclosing potentially biasing conflicts of interests among authors

of scientific articles and quoted experts.

In letters to Science editor Donald Kennedy, Nature editor-in-chief Philip

Campbell, and editors of several other Nature publications, the scientists

document several cases in which such conflicts went undisclosed.

One prominent scientist, Roger Beachy, director of the Danforth Plant Science

Center, published an editorial in Science and cosigned a letter in Nature

Biotechnology. Neither journal disclosed that Beachy’s research on agricultural

biotechnology has been funded by Monsanto and other biotech companies, even

though the subjects of his submissions—the safety of genetically engineered

crops and intellectual-property policies—are directly relevant to those

companies.

In a Science news article by Jocelyn Kaiser, toxicologist John Doull is

identified only by his academic affiliation. His connections to several chemical

and food companies go undisclosed—even though he is quoted defending the use of

human trials for pesticides.

And according to a recent article in The New York Times, Charles Nemeroff, the

author of a Nature Neuroscience review article on treatment for mood disorders,

did not disclose his ownership of a patent on a treatment he favorably reviewed.

Unlike their counterparts in biomedicine, basic-science journal editors have

been slow to adopt comprehensive conflict-of-interest policies, according to

CSPI.

“Science and business are intertwined,” said Virginia A. Sharpe, Director of the

Integrity in Science Project at CSPI. “Strong conflict-of-interest policies in

journals can help ensure that readers have all the information they need to

interpret scientists’ statements.”

Among the signers to the letter are Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of New

England Journal of Medicine; Alan Blum, M.D., former editor-in-chief of the

Medical Journal of Australia and the New York State Journal of Medicine; Bruce

C. Coull, Ph.D., Dean, School of the Environment at the University of South

Carolina; Herbert Needleman, M.D., professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D.,

Professor Emeritus of medicine and medical ethics, Georgetown University Medical

Center; CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson; and a number of prominent

bioethicists. –30–