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Friday, February 3, 2017

Beyond Conflicts of Interest: Disclosing Medical Biases

David M. Shaw
JAMA. 2014;312(7):697-698.
doi:10.1001/jama.2014.8035

The editors of medical and scientific journals always ask authors of papers to declare any financial conflicts of interest (COIs) related to their research. There has recently been a shift away from allowing authors to decide what constitutes a financial COI toward asking them to disclose any potential perceived COI; some journal editors even ask authors to disclose any and all financial interests that they have. But there has also been a shift away from this focus on financial COIs toward a wider conception of COI that includes other types of bias. Since 2010, all journals associated with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) have asked authors to complete a unified COI form that requires disclosure of the following:

1. Associations with commercial entities that provided support for the work reported in the submitted
manuscript (the timeframe for disclosure in this section of the form is the life span of the work being reported).

2. Associations with commercial entities that could be viewed as having an interest in the general area of the submitted manuscript (in the three years before submission of the manuscript).

3. Non-financial associations that may be relevant or seen as relevant to the submitted manuscript.

The article is here.