Any affiliation can lead to bias

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1256

Published 11 August 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1256
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1256

Letters

Competing interests

Any affiliation can lead to bias

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

Lenzer and Brownlee rightly draw attention to the problem ofundeclared commercial interests that conflict with the publicinterest and influence media reporting of medical advances,but there is a danger that their diagnosis and proposed solutionignore the underlying causes.¹

Any affiliation, not just a link to a commercial enterprise,can lead to bias, and almost everybody has some sort of affiliation,so few people are truly independent. However, the absence orpresence of such affiliations does not prove or disprove bias.The actual, rather than potential, independence of a commentatordepends on qualities that are difficult to measure such as personalintegrity and expertise, rather than proxies such as declarationsof "no commercial interest."

More importantly, while efforts to identify conflicts of interestare important, there is an unhealthy trend towards the demonisationof everybody who is associated with the commercial sector. Commercialinterests are not always corrupting, . . . [Full text of this article]

Tammy L Boyce, research fellow, public health¹, Bob Ward, director, public policy²

¹ King’s Fund, London W1G 0AN, ² Risk Management Solutions, London EC3R 8NB

t.boyce@kingsfund.org.uk