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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Carnegie Mellon Researchers Find Physicians Are Biased When Evaluating Medical Conflict of Interest Policies

Same Patterns Found in Finance Industry; Researchers Suggest Need For Third Parties in Conflict of Interest Policy-Making Process

Carnegie Mellon Press Release
Originally published on June 19, 2012

Medical institutions have been under pressure to develop and implement policies to avoid conflicts of interest between physicians and pharmaceutical companies. In most cases, medical professionals who have a stake in the issues at hand craft the conflict of interest policies.

New research from Carnegie Mellon University's George Loewenstein and Zachariah Sharek and the University of Pittsburgh's Robert Schoen investigated whether medical professionals making conflict of interest policy decisions are able to separate their policy judgments from their personal, vested interests. The research, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, shows that physicians are subject to motivated bias when it comes to assessing the policies intended to regulate their behavior. The research team also tested financial planners and found similar stronger patterns of motivated bias.

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Finally, the control group with no vested interest evaluated both policies positively, and dismissed the objections as being unreasonable.

The entire press release is here.