Conflict of Interest: Disclosure to Whom? And How?

By Jane Robbins
Inside Higher Ed - Sounding Board
December 11, 2012

Conflict of interest in academic science is a controversial, but most of all a highly emotional, issue in the academy. Scientists and administrators disagree vehemently about whether it is a good or bad thing, and many aver that it has no impact on research—or that it is no one’s business. The thing is that the term conflict of interest is descriptive of a state, not a quality, and its effects or impacts can only be known, sometimes tragically and always far beyond the individual involved, after-the-fact. This is why disclosure is generally considered to be a poor means of avoiding bias or harm—it is too little, too late, and we are left with not knowing who or what to trust, and may need to run around retracting articles, shutting down trials, imposing sanctions, firing people, or engaging in yet another political effort to rein in a growing ill. Physician, heal thyself: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

At the moment, though, disclosure is the modus operandi. Even that took decades to put in place, and efforts to make disclosure, let alone enforcement, more robust have been disappointing exercises in which the whole point—the integrity of science and scientific institutions—bows to external pressure and resistance. One of the many disappointments in the recent (2009-2011), largely failed effort to strengthen conflict of interest rules and enforcement was the rejection of additional reporting to the federal government. In making my public comments at the time, I for one had called for reporting of all disclosures, patent/royalty data, equity values, contract terms, management plans, and other conflict-specific data to a central website created and maintained by the Public Health Service (HHS/PHS), the funding agent soliciting comments on proposed new rules. Some others made similar recommendations, as discussed below. In a rationalized interpretation of lessening the administrative and financial burden to institutions, the final rules instead called for each institution to create its own site and/or respond to requests for information on a case-by-case basis.  Appeasement often yields the irrational.

The entire story is here.