P.Mean >> Category >> Conflict of interest (created 2007-06-11).

Conflict of interest represents an outside influence, usually financial, that has the potential to upset the balance of impartiality that is important in credible research. Articles are arranged by date with the most recent entries at the top. You can find outside resources at the bottom of this page. Other entries about conflict of interest can be found in the conflict of interest page at the StATS website.

2009

  1. P.Mean: Institute of Medicine report on conflict of interest (created 2009-05-24). The National Academies Press has announced the release of a report, Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice, prepared by a special committee of the Institute of Medicine.

    2008
     
  2. P.Mean: Evaluating private conflicts of interest (created 2008-10-01). The open source journal PLoS Medicine has an interesting editorial that is worth commenting on. Making Sense of Non-Financial Competing Interests. The PLoS Medicine Editors. PLoS Med 5(9): e199 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050199.

Outside resources:

Creative Commons License All of the material above this paragraph is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. This page was written by Steve Simon and was last modified on 2010-04-11. The material below this paragraph links to my old website, StATS. Although I wrote all of the material listed below, my ex-employer, Children's Mercy Hospital, has claimed copyright ownership of this material. The brief excerpts shown here are included under the fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright laws.

2008

2007

  1. Stats: Reforming conflict of interest statements (November 12, 2007). In a recent talk, I was asked to disclose any conflicts of interest. I did so, but I also commented that the organization I was speaking to, as well as most other organizations have a poorly thought out conflict of interest policy. The problem with most of these policies is that they make it hard to disclose conflicts and easy to pretend that no conflicts exist. I believe that rather than having an easy box to check, make the statement of no conflict a more detailed one.
  2. Stats: Does promoting your book constitute a conflict of interest? (August 13, 2007). I give lots of talks and I usually put in a plug for my book, Statistical Evidence in Medical Trials. I even promote my book in the signature file that I put at the bottom of all my emails. My philosophy is that if you don't promote yourself, who will? I got an interesting email from someone associated with the Continuing Medical Education (CME) department of a site where I will be giving a talk that very politely called me to task for this self-promotion.
  3.  Stats: Need for a conflict of interest policy (August 9, 2007). I attended a very interesting session at the Joint Statistical Meetings last week on conflict of interest. I asked a question during the session that seemed quite obvious to me at the time, but which was apparently not thought of by any of the speakers. Why did no one in that session formally declare whether they had a conflict of interest?
  4. Stats: Conflict of interest in the Wakefield MMR study (July 26, 2007). An interesting case study in conflict of interest (perhaps a bit too complex to be described fairly in this brief weblog entry) involves a controversial paper. The lead author of this paper, Wakefield A; Murch S, Anthony A, Linnell J, Casson D, Malik M, Berelowitz M, Dhillon A, Thomson M, Harvey P, Valentine A, Davies S, Walker-Smith J (February 28 1998). Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children 637-641. The Lancet - Vol. 351, Issue 9103. DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0, is Andrew Wakefield. Dr. Wakefield has alleged on the basis of twelve children referred to his clinic that there was a link between the MMR vaccine and the development of autism.
  5. Stats: Conflict of interest list (July 18, 2007). I was asked to fill out a conflict of interest form for a talk I will be giving in December. While I have not gotten any money directly from drug companies recently, I do have some financial support outside the hospital that might be considered a conflict of interest in some contexts. These sources of support do not relate directly or indirectly to the topic I will be discussing in December (or any of the topics that I plan to discuss), but it it better to disclose too much rather than too little. I will try to update this page as new sources of support appear.
  6. Stats: Manipulation of peer-review publications by pharmaceutical companies (March 9, 2007). This weblog entry provides some discussion points that I want to share in a seminar: Stats #72: Manipulation of peer-review publications by pharmaceutical companies
  7. Stats: PharmedOUT website (March 2, 2007). In response to educational resources in medicine that are dominated by drug company support, a  new website, PharmedOUT, has been formed, www.pharmedout.org/index.htm.

    2006
     
  8. Stats: When can a conservative trust a liberal information source (and vice versa) (July 10, 2006). I have a brother-in-law who loves to debate politics and religion. He always takes an aggressively conservative stand (I'm a flaming liberal, but try not to mention politics too much on this weblog). Often he will cite a "liberal" source, such as the New York Times to support his arguments, and although he does not trust most of what is published in these liberal sources, he will still cite them when they make a point in favor of a conservative viewpoint. His rationale is when a liberal source cites data supporting a conservative cause, they only do it grudgingly and because the facts are too overwhelming to ignore. I suppose I do the same thing myself, but with the politics reversed. But this is a dangerous approach to take for several reasons.
  9. Stats: What constitutes a conflict of interest? (May 4, 2006). I am a member of a committee that helps researchers set up Data Safety and Monitoring Boards (DSMBs) for research projects at Kansas University Medical Center (KUMC). The typical study that we would help set up DSMBs for would be small scale single center trials. We recommended that the typical DSMB have two specialists in the medical area of the research and a statistician. We ask the principal investigator to nominate the two specialists. Some debate ensued about whether the specialists nominated by the principal investigator would have a conflict of interest because they presumably would know and would have worked with the principal investigator.

    2005
     
  10. Stats: Taking charges of conflicting interest too far (June 4, 2005). You should always be aware of potential conflicts of interest. Sometimes researchers allow a financial incentive to influence their research and end up skewing  the data to achieve a particular outcome. More uncertain is the belief that researchers working in an area will try to obtain findings that encourage greater research funding in the area they work in. This might manifest itself in a tendency to exaggerate the importance of a particular disease and to overstate the number of people affected. One author commented that having an NIH grant is the biggest conflict of interest of all.
  11. Stats: More on conflicts of interest (March 23, 2005). I need to write up something on my very incomplete page on Intellectual conflict of interest. A review in JAMA of the report, Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States, which I commented on in a January 24, 2005 weblog entry, has an interesting quote about conflict of interest.

    2004
     
  12. Stats: Intellectual conflict of interest [Incomplete] (November 24, 2004). Here are some web pages that discuss the concept of an intellectual conflict of interest.
  13. Stats: Conflict of interest (July 20, 2004). Does having a commercial interest in the results of a drug trial cause a problem for the people running the trial? If it does, then much of the research that we rely on could be flawed. A recent article in the British Medical Journal raises some serious concerns: Efficacy and safety of antidepressants for children and adolescents. Jureidini JN, Doecke CJ, Mansfield PR, Haby MM, Menkes DB, Tonkin AL. Bmj 2004: 328(7444); 879-83.
  14. Stats: Conflict of Interest (February 25, 2004). The New York Review of Books has a extensive review written by Richard Horton of the book Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Biomedical Research? by Sheldon Krimsky. The review has an extensive bibliography, and cites some good work about problems with the quality and conclusions of corporate sponsored research.

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Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. This page was written by Steve Simon and was last modified on 2010-04-11.