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http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031001/06

 

Full disclosure?Nature review authors must now disclose financial ties, but some

want tougher rules | By Stephen Pincock

 

 

The editors of the Nature group of journals have announced that they will extend

their policy for disclosing financial ties to include authors of review papers,

but they have not gone as far as a group of senior academics and former journal

editors would like them to.

 

Nature journals already publish statements of commercial interest for all

primary papers. In the October issue of Nature Neuroscience, the journal's

editors write that the journals are widening that policy in response to concerns

raised by a review article published last November.

 

The paper on treatments for mood disorders, by Charles B. Nemeroff and Michael

J. Owens of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, included three

products to which Nemeroff had significant financial ties.

 

In February of this year, Robert T. Rubin of the Center for Neurosciences

Research, Allegheny General Hospital, and Bernard J. Carroll of the Pacific

Behavioral Research Foundation, wrote to the Nature group asking it to publish a

letter in which they described the review author's conflicts.

 

Charles G. Jennings, executive editor of Nature research journals, replied to

them with a letter explaining that the company had no conflict of interest

policy for review articles. But when their original letter went unpublished,

Rubin and Carroll took it to the New York Times, whose report was followed by

widespread press interest.

 

Now, the correspondence—and the change of policy—has been made public. " We take

these concerns seriously, and we are now extending our existing disclosure

policy to include review articles, " the Nature Neuroscience editorial says.

 

It points out that Nemeroff and Owens did not violate existing editorial

policies, " although one might argue that it would have been prudent to volunteer

a disclosure statement, given the extent of their financial interests. "

 

The journal also includes a letter from the US-based Center for Science in the

Public Interest (CSPI), which had already been lobbying for Nature to change its

policy.

 

CSPI says the journals should enforce disclosure of conflicts of interest not

only for authors, but for referees, and editors—similar to what is required by

the journal PNAS. It also calls for rejection of submissions in which authors'

conflicts are incompatible with integrity in science.

 

The letter is signed by Michael Jacobson and Virginia Sharpe from CSPI, and on

behalf of more than 20 others, including former editor of the New England

Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, and David Suzuki, professor emeritus at the

University of British Columbia.

 

" Such a policy is a necessary safeguard against potential bias and would ensure

that your readers have sufficient information to evaluate the studies,

commentary, reviews, letters and other statements made in the pages of the

Nature journals, " they write.

 

When CSPI suggested rejecting some papers, they were specifically thinking about

reviews, Jacobson told The Scientist.

 

" There is no reason to allow scientists with conflicts of interest to author

such pieces, " he said via email. " Another situation might relate to the

'supplements' that some journals publish. They carry the imprimatur of the

journal, but may be the proceedings of a biased conference or may be sponsored

by industry with conflicts of interest. "

 

But the Nature Neuroscience editors said the journal would not be adopting that

policy. " We do not believe editors should ever reject a paper simply because the

author had a financial stake in its contents. Our aim is not to conduct a moral

crusade, and it should be obvious to even the " purest " academics that the

practical benefits of academic research cannot materialize without the help of

industry. "

 

Philip Campbell, editor in chief of Nature, noted that the journal's online

guidelines offer a more thorough explanation of its new policy, and suggested

that the most recent statement might not be the last we hear on this subject

from Nature.

 

" We are actively reviewing our policies with respect to other sections of Nature

not mentioned in this statement, " he told The Scientist.

 

For Nemeroff and Rubin, who stress the views expressed in the review were not

motivated by personal avarice, the affair has also triggered a change of policy:

" Going forward, we intend to provide all financial disclosure information, even

if it is not requested by the journal editor, " they write.

Links for this article

Nature

http://www.nature.com

 

Nature Neuroscience

http://nature.com/neuro

 

S. Mayor, " Conflict over competing interests, " The Scientist, August 14, 2003.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030814/04/

 

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com

 

Center for Science in the Public Interest, Integrity in Science Project

http://www.cspinet.org/integrity/index.html

 

PNAS

http://www.pnas.org

 

New England Journal of Medicine

http://www.nejm.org

 

Nature Competing financial interests

http://www.nature.com/nature/submit/policies/competing/index.ht ml

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

©2003, The Scientist Inc. in association with BioMed Central.

 

 

 

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