Association between competing interests and conclusions

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7377.1420

BMJ 2002;325:1420 ( 14 December )

Letters

Association between competing interests and conclusions

Denominator problem needs to be addressed

Reasons for relation are also interesting

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

See also editorial by Smith

Denominator problem needs to be addressed

EDITOR $---$ During my personal exchange of material with Kjaergard and Als-Nielsen (I provided them with the equipoise scale, ourdata extraction forms, etc), I commented that their associationbetween authors' competing interests and conclusions could havebeen explained by at least two additional types of bias. The firstis pervasive authors' self selection bias (the authors tend tosend their best pieces to a high impact journal such as the BMJ)and the second is the bias of the BMJ 's editors.¹

The major problem with this type of research is that its results can never be completely reliable until the problem of denominatorsis addressed. The journal editors' decision accepting or rejectinga given paper for publication can potentially seriously skew thedistribution of studies with negative and positive results. Ibelieve that the editors of the BMJ have a unique opportunity. . . [Full text of this article]

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Association between competing interests and authors' conclusions: epidemiological study of randomised clinical trials published in the BMJ: Lise L Kjaergard and Bodil Als-Nielsen
BMJ 2002 325: 249. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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