Abstract
The potential for financial conflicts of interest (COIs) to damage the credibility of scientific research has become a significant social concern, especially in the wake of high-profile incidents involving the pharmaceutical, tobacco, fossil-fuel, and chemical industries. Scientists and policy makers have debated whether the presence of financial COIs should count as a reason for treating research with suspicion or whether research should instead be evaluated solely based on its scientific quality. This paper examines a recent proposal to develop criteria for evaluating the credibility of research without considering its source of funding. It concludes that proposals of this sort are likely to be either ineffective or impractical in many cases. Nevertheless, this does not imply that all research funded by those with an interest in the outcome must be placed under a cloud of suspicion; there are conditions under which research is at much more serious risk of being corrupted than in other cases, and attention to these conditions can guide productive responses to financial COIs.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
As the later sections of this paper emphasize, industry is not the only interest group that inappropriately influences science. While industry has received a great deal of attention (in part because of the prodigious financial resources at its disposal), government agencies, labor organizations, and citizens’ groups sometimes employ very similar strategies.
It should be noted that two of the 118 studies listed as being funded by organizations “without a major stake in the outcome” were actually supported by labor organizations, which could potentially be characterized as having an interest in finding that particular chemicals are harmful.
Some commentators might argue that if criteria focus on proxies for evidential quality rather than evidential quality itself, they should not even be placed in the category of confirmatory criteria. But this is just a semantic question of how one chooses to define the categories; the crucial issue is to clarify how each of Conrad and Becker’s ten criteria actually does or does not support study credibility.
One might argue that if following GLP guidelines ensures that the evidence reported in a study is trustworthy, then it does in fact provide important information related to a study’s credibility. This may indeed be the case, but it still provides only part of the evidence needed to evaluate a study’s credibility. A study with very trustworthy data but an inappropriate study design could not be classified as providing credible conclusions.
I thank David Resnik for helpful insights related to this paragraph.
While this paper proposes three conditions that help to determine whether financial COIs challenge study credibility, Resnik and Elliott (2013) propose five conditions. Nevertheless, the conditions in both papers are closely related. The second condition in this paper (that individuals have strong incentives to influence scientific findings) is elaborated in terms of three criteria in Resnik and Elliott (2013): whether the funders have a significant financial stake in study outcomes, whether their financial interests coincide with the goal of producing credible research, and whether the funders have a history of influencing research. The third condition in this paper (that individuals have opportunities to influence scientific findings) is elaborated in terms of two conditions in Resnik and Elliott (2013): whether it is easy to manipulate research and whether there are oversight mechanisms to prevent bias.
I thank Martin Carrier and Torsten Wilholt for very helpful insights on this issue.
While these citizens’ groups do not have as many financial resources as industry, they can partially compensate for this limitation with powerful media and communications strategies. And because they are more likely to be trusted by the public than industry, these groups can have a significant impact on public risk perceptions.
References
Angell, M. (2005). The truth about the drug companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it. New York: Random House.
APHA (American Public Health Association). (2003). Supporting legislation for independent post-marketing phase IV Comparative evaluation of pharmaceuticals. Washington, DC: APHA.
Beder, S. (2000). Global spin (rev ed.). White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
Bekelman, J., Lee, Y., & Gross, C. (2003). Scope and impact of financial conflicts of interest in biomedical research. Journal of the American Medical Association, 289, 454–465.
Borgert, C. (2007). Conflict of interest or contravention of science. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, 48, 4–5.
Busenberg, G. (1999). Collaborative and adversarial analysis in environmental policy. Policy Studies, 32, 1–11.
Cain, D., Loewenstein, G., & Moore, D. (2005). The shortcomings of disclosure as a solution to conflicts of interest. In D. Moore, D. Cain, G. Loewenstein, & M. Bazerman (Eds.), Conflicts of interest: Challenges and solutions in business, law, medicine, and public policy (pp. 104–125). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Conrad, J., & Becker, R. (2011). Enhancing credibility of chemical safety studies: Emerging consensus on key assessment criteria. Environmental Health Perspectives, 119, 757–764.
Cranor, C. (2008). Toxic torts: Science, law, and the possibility of justice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cranor, C. (2011). Legally poisoned: How the law puts us at risk from toxicants. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Curzer, H., & Santillanes, G. (2012). Managing conflict of interest in research: Some suggestions for investigators. Accountability in Research, 19, 143–155.
Davis, M. (1982). Conflict of interest. Business & Professional Ethics Journal, 1, 17–27.
DeAngelis, C., & Fontanarosa, P. (2008). Impugning the integrity of medical science: The adverse effects of industry influence. Journal of the American Medical Association, 299, 1833–1835.
Douglas, H. (2005). Inserting the public into science. In S. Maasen & P. Weingart (Eds.), Democratization of expertise? Exploring novel forms of scientific advice in political decision making (pp. 153–169). Berlin: Springer.
Elliott, K. (2008). Scientific judgment and the limits of conflict-of-interest policies. Accountability in Research, 15, 1–29.
Elliott, K. (2009). Respect for lay perceptions of risk in the hormesis case. Human and Experimental Toxicology, 28, 21–26.
Elliott, K. (2011). Is a little pollution good for you? Incorporating societal values in environmental research. New York: Oxford University Press.
Elliott, K., & Volz, D. (2012). Addressing conflicts of interest in nanotechnology oversight: Lessons learned from drug and pesticide safety testing. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 14, 664–668.
Fagin, D., Lavelle, M., & the Center for Public Integrity. (1999). Toxic deception (2nd ed.). Monroe, Maine: Common Courage.
Healy, D., & Catell, D. (2003). Interface between authorship, industry, and science in the domain of therapeutics. British Journal of Psychiatry, 183, 22–27.
Henry, C., & Conrad, J. (2008). Scientific and legal perspectives on science generated for regulatory activities. Environmental Health Perspectives, 116, 136–141.
Hochster, H. (2008). The power of “P”: On overpowered clinical trials and “positive” results. Gastrointestinal Cancer Research, 2, 108–109.
Krimsky, S. (2003). Science in the Private Interest. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Lenzer, J. (2008). Truly independent research? British Medical Journal, 337, 7670.
Lesser, L., Ebbeling, C., Goozner, M., Wypij, D., & Ludwig, D. (2007). Relationship between funding source and conclusion among nutrition-related scientific articles. PLoS Medicine, 4, e5.
Loewenstein, G., Sah, S., & Cain, D. (2012). The unintended consequences of conflict of interest disclosure. Journal of the American Medical Association, 307, 669–670.
Longino, H. (2002). The fate of knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Markowitz, G., & Rosner, D. (2002). Deceit and denial: The deadly politics of environmental pollution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mayo, D. (1996). Error and the growth of experimental knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McCarty, L., Borgert, C., & Mihaich, E. (2012). Information quality in regulatory decision making: Peer review versus good laboratory practice. Environmental Health Perspectives, 120, 927–934.
McGarity, T., & Wagner, W. (2008). Bending science: How special interests corrupt public health research. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McKaughan, D., & Elliott, K. (2013). Backtracking and the ethics of framing: Lessons from voles and vasopressin. Accountability in Research, 20, 206–226.
Michaels, D. (2008). Doubt is their product: How industry’s assault on science threatens your health. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mirowski, P., & Van Horn, R. (2005). The contract research organization and the commercialization of scientific research. Social Studies of Science, 35, 503–548.
Moore, D., Cain, D., Loewenstein, G., & Bazerman, M. (Eds.). (2005). Conflicts of interest: Challenges and solutions in business, law, medicine, and public policy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Myers, J., vom Saal, F., Akingbemi, B., Arizono, K., Belcher, S., Colborn, T., et al. (2009). Why public health agencies cannot depend on good laboratory practices as a criterion for selecting data: The case of bisphenol A. Environmental Health Perspectives, 117, 309–315.
Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. (2010). Merchants of doubt. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
Proctor, R. (2012). Golden holocaust: Origins of the cigarette catastrophe and the case for abolition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Resnik, D. (2006a). Intentional exposure studies of environmental agents on human agents: Assessing benefits and risks. Accountability in Research, 14, 35–55.
Resnik, D. (2006b). The price of truth: How money affects the norms of science. New York: Oxford University Press.
Resnik, D., & Elliott, K. (2013). Taking financial relationships into account when assessing research. Accountability in Research, 20, 184–205.
Sarewitz, D. (2004). How science makes environmental controversies worse. Environmental Science & Policy, 7, 385–403.
Schafer, A. (2004). Biomedical conflicts of interest: A defense of the sequestration thesis—Learning from the cases of Nancy Olivieri and David Healy. Journal of Medical Ethics, 30, 8–24.
Shrader-Frechette, K. (2007). Taking action, saving lives: Our duties to protect environmental and public health. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sismondo, S. (2008). Pharmaceutical company funding and its consequences: A qualitative systematic review. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 29, 109–113.
Smith, R. (2005). Medical journals are an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies. PLoS Medicine, 2(5), e138. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138.
Society of Toxicology. (2008). Principles for research priorities in toxicology. Available at: http://www.toxicology.org/pr/PrinResearch.asp. Last accessed on December 11, 2012.
Sutton, P., Woodruff, T., Vogel, S., & Bero, L. (2011). Conrad and Becker’s ‘Ten Criteria’ fall short of addressing conflicts of interest in chemical safety testing. Environmental Health Perspectives, 119, a506–a507.
Thompson, D. (1993). Understanding financial conflicts of interest. New England Journal of Medicine, 329, 573–576.
Tweedale, T. (2011). Enhancing credibility of chemical safety studies: No consensus. Environmental Health Perspectives, 119, a507–a508.
Volz, D., & Elliott, K. (2012). Mitigating conflicts of interest in chemical safety testing. Environmental Science and Technology, 46, 7937–7938.
Wilholt, T. (2009). Bias and values in scientific research. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 40, 92–101.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the participants and attendees at the University of Cincinnati colloquium for Socially Engaged Philosophy of Science, the SPSP pre-conference workshop on Science, Policy, and Values at the University of Toronto, and the Science Studies Program at the University of California San Diego for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. I received particularly helpful feedback from Craig Callender, Jane Maienschein, David Resnik, David Volz, and two anonymous referees at various points in the development of the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Elliott, K.C. Financial Conflicts of Interest and Criteria for Research Credibility. Erkenn 79 (Suppl 5), 917–937 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9536-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9536-2