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LETTERS: M Felix Freshwater Financial conflicts should be included in online abstracts BMJ 2009; 338: b1934 [Full text]

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Media need financial ties made clear

Rosemary A Stanton   (13 May 2009)

feedback, Feedback, FEEDBACK

M Felix Freshwater   (15 May 2009)

Disclosure of funding included in CONSORT for Abstracts recommendations

Sally Hopewell, Liz Wager, Sideview.   (26 May 2009)

Media need financial ties made clear 13 May 2009
Rosemary A Stanton, Nutritionist NSW Australia 2577 Send response to journal: Re: Media need financial ties made clear	In my experience, few journalists who report on medical matters for daily newspapers go beyond an abstract and read the full text of articles in medical and scientific journals. It is therefore most important that financial or other ties/conflicts of interest be declared on all abstracts. This could help to improve the standard of reporting to the public and avoid some of the claims that 'scientists are always changing their minds'. In my area of human nutrition, if you take out all the papers written by those with some ties to vested interests, you'd find the basic advice has not changed anywhere near as much as the public believes. Competing interests: None declared
feedback, Feedback, FEEDBACK 15 May 2009
M Felix Freshwater, voluntary professor of surgery University of Miami School of Medicine 33156-7815 Send response to journal: Re: feedback, Feedback, FEEDBACK	I recommended open access to financial disclosures in papers or inclusion of financial disclosures in abstracts. Sadly, a paid subscription or $20 is necessary to read the recommendations. because they are not in the extract. Oh, the irony! Competing interests: None declared
Disclosure of funding included in CONSORT for Abstracts recommendations 26 May 2009
Sally Hopewell, Senior Research Fellow Centre for Statistics in Medicine. University of Oxford, 0X2 6UD., Liz Wager, Sideview. Send response to journal: Re: Disclosure of funding included in CONSORT for Abstracts recommendations	We agree with Dr Freshwater that disclosures about funding should be included on all abstracts. You may be interested to know that CONSORT for Abstracts (1) includes this as a recommended item. In addition to the new Pico format, the BMJ recently included CONSORT for Abstracts recommendations in its ‘Instructions to Authors’. Better reporting of abstracts of journal articles is important because we know that many readers will focus on the abstract, and it may be the only thing they read, even though the full text is available. We hope that the BMJ’s endorsement of CONSORT for Abstracts acts as an example to other journals where, as Dr Freshwater points out, the abstract may be the only part of the article that is freely accessible. 1. Hopewell S, Clarke M, Moher D, Wager E, Middleton P, Altman DG, Schulz KF; CONSORT Group. CONSORT for reporting randomized controlled trials in journal and conference abstracts: explanation and elaboration. PLoS Med. 2008;5(1):e20. Competing interests: Both authors were involved in the development of the CONSORT for Abstracts Statement.