Carlos
About a year ago I wrote to the CONSORT statement organization
and suggested that they add “possible competing interests” to the checklist. They
replied that this would be in the next update, but did not say when the next
update would be made. The current CONSORT statement was made in 2001.
Michael
From: Dr. Carlos Cuello
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 06 August 2009 05:04
Subject: Re: another reason
Thanks for the responses
On this subject. How important would be the declaration of conflict of
interests (COI) by the authors on the validity of the article? Should it be on
the critical appraisal checklists?
On a systematic review checklist for validity, a funnel plot searching for
publication bias is an important item to look for. Publication bias sometimes
is not a random or systematic error, it could be an intentional bias (fraud,
deceive??), the best example is the one we saw with Vioxx and the reason why clinicaltrias.gov and other trial
registration sites were created.
"Research journals are still doing too little to protect themselves and
their readers from the burgeoning incidence of scientific fraud, a poll of
editors has found. Despite a spate of high profile misconduct cases in recent
years"
http://tiny.cc/h7WGe
My point is; Should CASP and other critical appraisal tools check for COI and
other "intentional bias"? As it is done in the systematic review
checklists when looking for publication bias?
Does these items affect the validity (internal or external)?
On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 12:13 PM, roy poses <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I am a big supporter of systematic reviews, and did not mean
to disparage them.
However, it seems to be that the relevant principles of transparency, and
indeed, the principles of transparency that apply to the EBM movement, were
meant to protect against inadvertent error, not against deliberate attempts at
deception. A company willing to sponsor the deception entailed by having
its marketing group design ostensibly scholarly articles, have ghost-writers
construct the articles, and recruit distinguished academics to pretend to be
their first authors, might well be willing to go to the further effort of
engineering fundamentally deceptive, ghost-written articles meant to look like
"systematic reviews." I am not sure how easy these would be to
detect.
As long as there are not strong disclosure requirements, and big penalties for
those failing to disclose, and as long as academic institutions are willing to
look the other way from these and other deceptive practices as long as their
faculty continue to bring in the money, these deceptive, ghost-writing and
other fundamentally corrupt practices are likely to continue.
At 12:05 PM 8/5/2009, Ian Johnson (ERU) wrote:
I am one of those clever
people, but as I am sure you will all be aware, the whole principle of
systematic reviews, if appropriately conducted, is transparency and
reproducibility. The question may be whether the results of all systematic
reviews reach the public domain to contribute to the evidence base.
K Ian Johnson
Technical Director
Evidence Research Unit
19-21 King Edward Street
Macclesfield, Cheshire
SK10 1AQ, United Kingdom
Tel +44 (0)1625 624048, Fax +44 (0)1625 619812
[log in to unmask]
www.evidenceresearchunit.com
From: Evidence based health (EBH) [
mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of roy poses
Sent: 05 August 2009 15:58
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: another reason
I completely agree that systematic reviews are preferable, but...
do you really think that the clever people hired by pharma/ biotech/ device
companies could not churn out what look like systematic reviews that would
still come to conclusions in favor of their vested interests?
This latest case of ghost-writing is an argument for, at the very least, full
and detailed disclosure about all people involved in authorship.
Another reason why narrative review articles should be replaced by systematic
reviews
Wyeth and the ghostwriters
http://bit.ly/AIZUL
Roy M. Poses MD
Clinical Associate Professor
Brown University School of Medicine
<[log in to unmask]>
--
Carlos A. Cuello-García, MD
Director, Centre for Evidence-Based Practice-Tecnologico de Monterrey
Cochrane-ITESM coordinator. Professor of Paediatrics and Clinical Research
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