When do your politics become a competing interest?

A recent BMJ article asked, “Would action on health inequalities have saved New Labour?” (BMJ 2010;340:c3294, doi:10.1136/bmj.c3294). Its conclusion leaned heavily towards an affirmative response. An anonymous spokesperson for the Scottish Labour Party subsequently dismissed the article and its conclusions as “political point scoring”—on the basis that its lead author, Gerry McCartney (also lead author of the present article), “is a member of the Scottish Socialist Party” (www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/failure-to-tackle-healthinequalities-cost-labour-votes-1.1039889), even though he had declared this membership as a competing interest.

McCartney’s declaration was in line with the guidance provided to authors by leading journal editors in recent years. In 2009 a group of these editors requested that authors declare relevant “personal, professional, political, institutional, religious, or other associations” (BMJ 2009;339:b4144, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4144). And in the latest iteration of the uniform disclosure form, the question relating to non-financial competing interests has been replaced with: “Are there other relationships or activities that readers could perceive to have influenced, or that give the appearance of potentially influencing, what you wrote in the submitted work?” (BMJ …