WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, SVILEN-MILEV
When a scientist or doctor has a financial conflict of interest, open disclosure in scientific publications might actually backfire and make bias worse, warn the editors of PLoS Medicine in an editorial out today (April 23). Furthermore, disclosure policies in general do nothing to confront the issues of the conflicts of interest themselves, they write. So what can be done?
“The reliance that many of us in the medical and publishing communities have on disclosure policy is problematical,” said Jocalyn Clark, senior magazine editor at PLoS Medicine and one of the authors of the new editorial—“both because it leaves the real question of the conflict of interest unaddressed, but also and more importantly, because…disclosure may actually be worsening the problem.”
Indeed, a study by George ...
