More journal articles are revealed to lack full disclosure of the authors’ ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
A failure for industry researchers to disclose conflicts of interest in articles published in noted scientific journals may be wider than originally realized.
Earlier this year BioSpace, among other publications, reported on José Baselga, the former chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering, who resigned after failing to disclose his ties to the pharmaceutical industry in articles he published. Then, more recently, another investigation conducted by BioPharma Dive revealed the number of pharma company directors who have ties to nonprofit healthcare agencies. Many of those directors have failed to disclose those ties in their biographical information.
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported a number of journal articles penned by researchers from academic institutions or medical research centers have failed to disclose their financial ties to the industry. The article begins by noting that the dean of Yale University’s medical school, as well as the next president of “the most prominent society of cancer doctors.” The Times in conjunction with ProPublica said Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, who is the president-elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. declared in more than 50 articles he published over the past several years that he had no conflicts of interest. However, the investigation showed that drug companies have paid his employer, the Sarah Cannon Research Institute which he established, more than $100,000 for consulting fees, as well as $8 million for research he conducted “during the period for which disclosure was required.”
Burris, according to his biographical information provided by ASCO, established the first community-based phase I drug development program in Nashville in 1997, which became Sarah Cannon Research Institute. At the institute, Burris “led the first-in-human studies for many now-approved drugs that have changed the standard of care for several types of cancers.”
According to the Times, the Sarah Cannon Research Institute said the payments made by the pharma companies were made to the institution and not directly to Burris. However, the Times noted that some of the publications that Burris published his articles in required the disclosure, such as the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
The article also pointed at Yale’s Robert Alpern, who serves on the board of directors for Illinois-based AbbVie. The report said in 2017 he failed to disclose his ties to another company, Tricida, Inc., where he served as a board member. Tricida is developing medications for chronic kidney disease and had financed the research that was the subject of the article Alpern wrote.
Another researcher, Carlos L. Arteaga, the director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center in Dallas, failed to disclose monies he received over a three-year period from various companies, such as Novartis.
The revelations of these failures show a wider disregard for full transparency by the researchers, as well as a lack of due diligence by the editorial staff. However, it’s important to note that the failure to disclose a potential conflict of interest due to a financial tie does not mean that data within the article has been skewed or falsified.
When such failures to disclose ties are made public, the Times said there are few repercussions other than article corrections.
