ArticleScience and engineering ethics2012
Those who have the gold make the evidence: how the pharmaceutical industry biases the outcomes of clinical trials of medications.
Article in Science and engineering ethics, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 8 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Public-private knowledge transfer and access to medicines: a systematic review and qualitative study of perceptions and roles of scientists involved in HPV vaccine research.Globalization and health · 2020Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Industry sponsorship and research outcome: systematic review with meta-analysis.Intensive care medicine · 2018Pooled it
- Industry-funded versus non-profit-funded critical care research: a meta-epidemiological overview.Intensive care medicine · 2018Pooled it
- Industry sponsorship and research outcome.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2017Pooled it
- Cost-effectiveness research in cancer therapy: a systematic review of literature trends, methods and the influence of funding.BMJ open · 2017Pooled it
- Association between funding source, methodological quality and research outcomes in randomized controlled trials of synbiotics, probiotics and prebiotics added to infant formula: a systematic review.BMC medical research methodology · 2013Pooled it
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- General practitioners' role in safeguarding patients with dementia in their use of dietary supplements. A qualitative study.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2024Article
- Women's experiences with non-invasive prenatal testing in Switzerland: a qualitative analysis.BMC medical ethics · 2023Article
- For the "good of the lab": Insights from three focus groups concerning the ethics of managing a laboratory or research group.Accountability in research · 2023Article
- Disclosing and Managing Non-Financial Conflicts of Interest in Scientific Publications.Research ethics · 2023Article
- Off-Label Use vs Off-Label Marketing: Part 2: Off-Label Marketing-Consequences for Patients, Clinicians, and Researchers.JACC. Basic to translational science · 2023Article
- Commentary: Reconsidering Pharmaceutical Research and Development Investments.Healthcare policy = Politiques de sante · 2023Article
- Science, Values, and the New Demarcation Problem.Journal for general philosophy of science = Zeitschrift fur allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie · 2023Article
- A global social contract to ensure access to essential medicines and health technologies.BMJ global health · 2022Article
- A Proposal to Increase Value and Equity in the Development and Distribution of New Pharmaceuticals.International journal of health services : planning, administration, evaluation · 2022Article
- Concerns About Our Public Medical Response to COVID 19.The American journal of medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pharmaceutical companies fund the bulk of clinical research that is carried out on medications. Poor outcomes from these studies can have negative effects on sales of medicines. Previous research has shown that company funded research is much more likely to yield positive outcomes than research with any other sponsorship. The aim of this article is to investigate the possible ways in which bias can be introduced into research outcomes by drawing on concrete examples from the published literature. Poorer methodology in industry-funded research is not likely to account for the biases seen. Biases are introduced through a variety of measures including the choice of comparator agents, multiple publication of positive trials and non-publication of negative trials, reinterpreting data submitted to regulatory agencies, discordance between results and conclusions, conflict-of-interest leading to more positive conclusions, ghostwriting and the use of "seeding" trials. Thus far, efforts to contain bias have largely focused on more stringent rules regarding conflict-of-interest (COI) and clinical trial registries. There is no evidence that any measures that have been taken so far have stopped the biasing of clinical research and it's not clear that they have even slowed down the process. Economic theory predicts that firms will try to bias the evidence base wherever its benefits exceed its costs. The examples given here confirm what theory predicts. What will be needed to curb and ultimately stop the bias that we have seen is a paradigm change in the way that we treat the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the conduct and reporting of clinical trials.
Indexed as
Identifiers
21327723What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.