- Machiavelli's Laboratory is a free ebook that I published on April 13, 2010. It is a satiric discourse on scientific ethics, from the perspective of an unethical scientist. Please don't take any of the advice and opinions in the book (or the excerpts featured in this blog) seriously.This blog entry continues yesterday's blog on Acknowledgments in scientific manuscripts
Editors have a bad record when it comes to ensuring that their published articles are free from financial conflicts (1), (2). Authors seldom volunteer their conflicts of interest, and editors seldom demand disclosures (3). Ensuring integrity is a time-consuming and thankless task. No editor has ever earned a dollar for his journal by uncovering a conflict of interest in a study. Basically, editors are in the business of selling journals, not advancing science.
Until recently, editors did not ask authors to disclose conflicts that might bias a manuscript's conclusions . Nobody really cared. Today, most journals have a "Conflicts" section, but statements are prepared in such a perfunctory fashion that their value is negligible.
Here is an example of about the best "Conflicts" section that you can hope to find in a manuscript.
The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests (4).
The sentence offers a clear statement from the authors, indicating that no conflicts exist. Of course, the editor offers no corroborating statement indicating that he has made a reasonable effort to validate the author's declaration.
Among the many scientific journals, there is no standard "Conflicts" statement. Some statements are barely worth reporting. Here is an example of a statement that could bear some improvement.
The authors declare no competing financial interests (5).
Here, the authors declare that they have no competing financial interests. Whether they have competing interests of a non-financial nature is anyone's guess.
Here's another.
The author reported no potential conflicts of interest (6).
Does this mean that they authors had actual conflicts; not potential conflicts? Or perhaps the statement conveys a completely different message. It may mean that conflicts exist, but they're all so very uninteresting.
Here's another
The authors of this manuscript have no conflict of interest to declare (7).
If I say, "I have no money to give you," it may mean that I have no money whatsoever, or it may mean that none of my money is held for the purpose of giving to you. In this "Conflicts" statement, the authors may have conflicts of interest, but none that they care to declare.
For brevity, the following cannot be beaten.
Competing interests: none declared (8).
Does this mean that the authors declared that they had no conflicts, or does it mean that the authors did not declare anything at all? Perhaps they forgot to respond to the editor's "Competing interests" query.
Why can't the editors of scientific journals do a little editing of their own and compose a useful "Conflicts" statement?
REFERENCES
[1] Smith R. Journals fail to adhere to guidelines on conflicts of interest. BMJ 323:651 (inclusive), 2001.
[2] Gross CP, Gupta AR, Krumholz HM. Disclosure of financial competing interests in randomised controlled trials: cross sectional review. BMJ 326:526-527, 2003.
[3] Hussain A, Smith R. Declaring financial competing interests: survey of five general medical journals. BMJ 323:263-264, 2001.
[4] Gressner OA, Weiskirchen R, Gressner AM. Evolving concepts of liver fibrogenesis provide new diagnostic and therapeutic options. Comparative Hepatology 6:7, 2007.
[5] Landgren O, Kyle RA, Pfeiffer RM. Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) consistently precedes multiple myeloma: a prospective study. Blood 113:5412-5417, 2009.
[6] Slany RK. The molecular biology of mixed lineage leukemia. Haematologica 94:984-993, 2009.
[7] Odell A, Askham J, Whibley C, Hollstein M. How to become immortal: let me count the ways. Aging 2:160-165, 2010.
[8] Bauer AJ, Stratakis CA. The lentiginoses: cutaneous markers of systemic disease and a window to new aspects of tumorigenesis. J Med Genet 42:801-810, 2005.
- © 2011 Jules Berman
