Clinical trial chiefs more likely tied to industry

[Celebration]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE60A5AH20100111

Cancer researchers who have the greatest ability to influence research are also the researchers with the greatest financial ties to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, according to a report released today.

In a study, researchers found that cancer researchers who design clinical trials, analyze or interpret the data, or play other key scientific roles are four times more likely to have financial ties to industry than their counterparts who have lesser roles in these studies, such as recruiting study subjects or collecting the data.

Taking the lead role in conception and design, analysis and interpretation, or drafting the manuscript, affords substantial influence over the outcome of the study or the way the results are presented, Dr. Steven Joffe of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston and colleagues note in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

.....................

Authors who performed central intellectual roles in clinical trials were 4.3-times more likely than other authors to report financial relationships to industry. This relationship was present among both industry-sponsored and non-industry-sponsored studies, although it was stronger for industry-sponsored trials.

...................

All of that means "the potential for bias appears to be even greater than was previously thought," Joffe warned.

[Clovis Sangrail]

1. *very misleading article

First, their information comes from looking at 235 published cancer drug trials.
That most of the main authors are getting some amount of funding from pharma is *extremely unsurprising.

Second, they compare the number of first authors with industry ties to all the authors.
The rest of the authors might be post-docs, grad-students, or staff researchers ... all of whom are likely to have *no grants* from anybody.

Third, the term "financial ties" is amorphous enough to be questioned.
Say pharma sponsors a PI to give a talk on x in 2002 (and allows him to say what he/she wants about a particular topic .. which is generally the case) and then in 2007 that same PI writes a paper about y, which that pharma from 2002 has nothing to do with - is there a problem with this?

I'm sure there *is corruption but I'm also sure that this article is trying to manipulate opinion more than it's trying to inform.

[Celebration]

2. certainly those are good points

Those are probably mentioned in the article, though I haven't seen it. I have to believe that this was done in this manner, because, in the past the authors' ties to industry were looked at more globally, without differentiating among the roles. Thus, statistics were compiled showing a certain amount of pharmaceutical connections to study authors.

However, these statistics understated the connections, because ALL researchers were lumped together. This study tried to separate out the researchers with real control over the trials from those with nominal control.

But, like you said, this result was to be expected. To my knowledge, looking at the ties in this way had not been done in any past study. The whole point is to get a more accurate view of the financial ties of the lead researchers to the cancer industry.

[HuckleB]

3. Exactly.

Propaganda with no constructive purpose is all it seems to be.

[Celebration]

4. There is a lot of detail

that shows they are being thoughtful. And it is in a peer reviewed journal. If you read the whole article--

"In some cases, they may represent high integrity interactions between industry and academic scientists seeking knowledge about the effect of a treatment on patients. In other cases, they could represent low integrity interactions in which science and marketing commingle and academic scientists are unduly influenced through financial and non-financial benefits provided by industry," Krumholz said.

In a telephone interview with Reuters Health, Dr. Bernard Lo, director of the program in medical ethics at the University of California at San Francisco said not all types of relationships between researchers and companies are of equal concern.

"One type of relationship that is now being singled out is being on a speakers bureau for a company, where you give a talk for a company and they really control the content of the talk; they often give you slides, train you to give the company message and its not really (the speaker's) independent work. Knowing this might lead you to review their article a little more carefully."

"Also, the dollar value of the relationship is worth knowing. If someone is making a couple thousand dollars a year, are you really suspicious they are going to be unduly influenced by the company? But if it is $50,000 a year or $100,000 a year, then I think you might be a little more skeptical. But this type of information often isn't disclosed."

"Using the scientific literature to advance an agenda is always a concern when the author is tied to industry though a financial relationship," David H. Johnson and Leora Horn from the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, Tennessee wrote in a commentary published with the Joffe study.

This doesn't seem like a knee jerk response. And, there are problems with financial ties.