1 Boring Old Man reflects on his frequent use of expletives in response to a series of New England Journal of Medicine articles downplaying conflicts of interest in medicine and psychiatry. And an NEJM “Reader Poll” on the topic describes physicians in different potential conflict-of-interest scenarios, and asks which of the physicians should be allowed to publish scientific reviews. The ongoing poll results are publicly displayed.
So far, the NEJM poll shows nearly 80% of respondents trusting that scientific reviews can responsibly be written by people owning patents on related products, taking money from related pharmaceutical companies, and doing research at institutions heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies. The only potential reviewer who is overwhelmingly not trusted by NEJM readers, apparently, is a hypothetical physician who takes money from a pharmaceutical company but is also described as having a small practice and as working with “a number of patient-advocacy groups.”
The articles and controversy were previously reported on by Mad in America. The NEJM poll is open until June 17, 2015.
Reader Poll on Conflicts of Interest (New England Journal of Medicine)
unserious arguments seriously… (1 Boring Old Man, May 27, 2015)
