FLICKR, PROTEINBIOCHEMISTWhen a scientific article has an author or a list of authors, we usually have no reason to wonder who was responsible for the work. But despite increased focus on conflicts of interest (COI), recent events suggest that there may be more to authorship than a list of researchers’ names and their affiliations. Earlier this year, a court case revealed that four independent laboratories that contributed to a study on a proprietary chemical published in a peer-reviewed journal were not so independent after all. The authors declared no COI and did not include mention of any funding or other acknowledgments. But when the study was challenged by a competitor in court, it was discovered that the company that produced the chemical in question had designed the study, paid the first author to generate the manuscript, and covered all expenses incurred by the participating laboratories.
Knowing who funded the research behind scientific results is like having caller ID. If a call comes in and the number is withheld, you might become suspicious and ignore the call. Scientific authorship should be just as simple so that we can concentrate our attention on the sources we trust.
Most major journals now require that authors reveal financial relationships with any parties of potential interest to the research being reported. When perusing a paper, readers should quickly be able to find out who initiated the science, who paid for it or contributed to it, and who wrote the manuscript. It may be that this information is of no consequence, but hiding it suggests something deceitful is going on. Exactly for this reason, COI statements ...
