Conflicts of interest matter and awareness is needed

A conflict of interest arises by having two conflicting goals in one's research. The primary goal of research relevant to public health is to produce impartial evidence on health hazards for humans. Several entities – including industry - may have public health as a goal among others, but this...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of epidemiology and community health (1979) 2015-10, Vol.69 (10), p.1018-1020
Main Authors: Vineis, Paolo, Saracci, Rodolfo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomedical Research - economics
Biomedical Research - ethics
Careers
Conflict of Interest - economics
Conflicts of interest
Disclosure - ethics
Essay
Financial Support - ethics
Health hazards
Humans
Industry - economics
Industry - ethics
Public health
Public Health - economics
Public Health - ethics
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Summary:A conflict of interest arises by having two conflicting goals in one's research. The primary goal of research relevant to public health is to produce impartial evidence on health hazards for humans. Several entities – including industry - may have public health as a goal among others, but this is not their primary goal. Primary goals are in those cases profit or career, that conflict with the goal of health. It is a role of the State to foster research whose primary goal is impartial evidence on factors affecting population health. Disclosure of conflicts of interest is not enough: the view that disclosure solves all problems amounts to say that a declaration of having produced unbiased evidence is a self-fulfilling guarantee that the evidence will not be affected by conflicts of interest. This concept is seriously misleading. A conflict of interest arises from the circumstances in which research occurs and does not exist only in the opinion of some people or groups (or the authors of a paper).
ISSN:0143-005X
1470-2738
DOI:10.1136/jech-2014-205012