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Should journals stop publishing research funded by the drug industry?

BMJ 2014; 348 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g171 (Published 14 January 2014) Cite this as: BMJ 2014;348:g171

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Re: Should journals stop publishing research funded by the drug industry?

Dear Editors

Current decision-makers (including Fiona Godlee) at the BMJ has decided in 2013 to stop printing any tobacco industry-sponsored research papers based on the provisions that the research arised from this industry is compromised and persistently 'shown' to be deliberately produced to encourage ignorance and advance the ultimate goal of selling its deadly products while shoring up its damaged legitimacy. On the basis that "biases and research misconduct are often impossible to detect and that the source of funding can influence the outcomes of studies in invisible ways", BMJ has it "will no longer consider for publication any study that is partly or wholly funded by the tobacco industry" regardless of actual content of the research submitted for publication.

This is a significant step by BMJ and other medical literature organisation as it considers any tobacco-funded studies to be tainted, and indirectly implied the integrity of all of authors responsible for the studies as compromised. This decision is made in spite of the push by BMJ to promote the open-data campaign which is supposed to reduce research fraud and skewed research. Evidently the Editors at the BMJ had either no confidence that their Open-Data campaign can detect fraudulent or misleading research lead by the tobacco industry, or that the BMJ does not have the resources to investigate or verify the analysis and conclusions made by the researchers (or their masters).

If the same assumption is made that the pharmaceutical companies (the big pharma) work on the similar basis as the tobacco industries, then the conclusion for the discussion would have been clear, and the editors would have proceeded without requiring further discussion and consultation with all stakeholders, as it happened for the tobacco industries. What the BMJ editors have to be confident of is the consistent persistent pervasive misleading and/or fraudulent nature of big-pharma-sponsored research.

Obviously they are not, and here we are having a discussion.

Like Richard Smith the former BMJ editor in 2003 (ref 1), I am passionately prodebate and proscience and I believe a blanket ban would be antiscience. Furthermore policies like this involving big pharmam, will retrospectively affect reputations of all researchers previously involved in industry-sponsored studies, even if the ban is prospective, and calls into if sponsorship by any entity should be tolerated.

No one organisation is immune to bias of some form and lobbying from interest groups. Even governmental agencies can potentially base the premise of their grant endowment based on solely on ruling party policies or pure cost-economics without considering patient needs (eg a joint replacement costs as much as 10,000 vaccine, so the life of an adult, no longer working, is being compared the lives of 10,000 babes). New proven technology may not be taken up since the enormous start-up cost will be prohibitive in the current climate of economic austerity. It is possible the Human Genome Project may not have been funded by most of the governmental agencies if nationalist economic rationale (and not noble vision of all human) is the basis for research funding.

Certainly no group capable of sponsoring research is immune to vested interests. if the tobacoo industry is banned because we can trust them, then do the same for those sponsored by big pharma and governmental agencies, but beware:
The editorial freedom claimed by BMJ (published by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association) is similarly claimed by many researchers of industry-sponsored studies, for

"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her"
The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version (1611), “The Gospel According to John”, chapter 8, verses 7

Reference

Smith R. Passive smoking: comment from the editor. BMJ2003;327:505.2.

Competing interests: No competing interests

17 January 2014
Shyan Goh
Orthopaedic Surgeon
.
Sydney, Australia