The Sunshine Act

Willis, Laura E.

doi:10.1002/9781119240822.ch34

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 30 publications

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“…Failure to do so is considered a breach of academic ethics. Societal concern about the corrupting influence of such conflicts is great enough that in the US it is legally mandated that every payment to any physician by an industry source be reported annually to a governmental public database 15. However, despite this public and scientific concern, no research has examined whether such disclosures affect assessments of research quality in naturalistic settings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of revealing authors’ conflicts of interests in peer review: randomized controlled trial

John

Loewenstein

Marder

et al. 2019

BMJ

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ObjectiveTo assess the effect of disclosing authors’ conflict of interest declarations to peer reviewers at a medical journal.DesignRandomized controlled trial.SettingManuscript review process at the Annals of Emergency Medicine. ParticipantsReviewers (n=838) who reviewed manuscripts submitted between 2 June 2014 and 23 January 2018 inclusive (n=1480 manuscripts).InterventionReviewers were randomized to either receive (treatment) or not receive (control) authors’ full International Committee of Medical Journal Editors format conflict of interest disclosures before reviewing manuscripts. Reviewers rated the manuscripts as usual on eight quality ratings and were then surveyed to obtain “counterfactual scores”—that is, the scores they believed they would have given had they been assigned to the opposite arm—as well as attitudes toward conflicts of interest.Main outcome measureOverall quality score that reviewers assigned to the manuscript on submitting their review (1 to 5 scale). Secondary outcomes were scores the reviewers submitted for the seven more specific quality ratings and counterfactual scores elicited in the follow-up survey.ResultsProviding authors’ conflict of interest disclosures did not affect reviewers’ mean ratings of manuscript quality (Mcontrol=2.70 (SD 1.11) out of 5; Mtreatment=2.74 (1.13) out of 5; mean difference 0.04, 95% confidence interval –0.05 to 0.14), even for manuscripts with disclosed conflicts (Mcontrol= 2.85 (1.12) out of 5; Mtreatment=2.96 (1.16) out of 5; mean difference 0.11, –0.05 to 0.26). Similarly, no effect of the treatment was seen on any of the other seven quality ratings that the reviewers assigned. Reviewers acknowledged conflicts of interest as an important matter and believed that they could correct for them when they were disclosed. However, their counterfactual scores did not differ from actual scores (Mactual=2.69; Mcounterfactual=2.67; difference in means 0.02, 0.01 to 0.02). When conflicts were reported, a comparison of different source types (for example, government, for-profit corporation) found no difference in effect.ConclusionsCurrent ethical standards require disclosure of conflicts of interest for all scientific reports. As currently implemented, this practice had no effect on any quality ratings of real manuscripts being evaluated for publication by real peer reviewers.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%