ArticleResearch integrity and peer review
Conflict of interest disclosure in biomedical research: A review of current practices, biases, and the role of public registries in improving transparency.
Article in Research integrity and peer review. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 53 papers, 6 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, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Moderators of Sexual Recidivism as Indicator of Treatment Effectiveness in Persons With Sexual Offense Histories: An Updated Meta-analysis.Sexual abuse : a journal of research and treatment · 2024Pooled it
- The Influence of Industry Affiliation on Randomized Controlled Trials of Platelet-Rich Plasma for Knee Osteoarthritis.The American journal of sports medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Existing guidance on reporting of consensus methodology: a systematic review to inform ACCORD guideline development.BMJ open · 2022Pooled it
- Plasma of Argon Treatment of the Implant Surface, Systematic Review of In Vitro Studies.Biomolecules · 2022Pooled it
- A sex/gender perspective on interventions to promote children's and adolescents' overall physical activity: results from genEffects systematic review.BMC pediatrics · 2020Pooled it
- Participation of Women and Older Participants in Randomized Clinical Trials of Lipid-Lowering Therapies: A Systematic Review.JAMA network open · 2020Pooled it
- Retraction and correction of scientific articles due to conflicts of interest: a cross‑sectional analysis of the Retraction Watch database.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Conflicts of Interest, Funding Support, and Author Affiliation in Peer-Reviewed Research on the Relationship between Climate Change and Geophysical Characteristics of Hurricanes.Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2026Article
- Bridging gaps between scientific research and regulatory decision-making in Europe: roles of academia, risk assessors, and policymakers.Frontiers in toxicology · 2026Article
- Ethical Principles and Practices in HIV Acquisition Research in Humanitarian Crises: A Cross-Sectional Study.The Journal of law, medicine & ethics : a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics · 2026Article
- Literature as a Lens: Investigating Institutional Failures in Research Integrity through Fiction and Fact.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2025Article
- Research on policy mechanisms to address funding bias and conflicts of interest in biomedical research: a scoping review.Research integrity and peer review · 2025Article
- Ethics practices associated with reusing health data: an assessment of patient registries.BMC medicine · 2024Article
- Conflicts of interest in submissions and testimonies to an Australian parliamentary inquiry on menopause.Health promotion international · 2024Article
- Article
- Explaining the concepts and examples of conflict of interest and its management in the medical laboratory system of Iran: A scoping review.Journal of education and health promotion · 2024Article
- Perspective: Examining Conflicts of Interest for Professional Service within the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Article
- Disclosing Conflicts of Interest to Potential Research Participants: Good for Nothing?Ethics & human research · 2023Article
- Conflicts of interest in electrophysiology and devices presentations.Europace : European pacing, arrhythmias, and cardiac electrophysiology : journal of the working groups on cardiac pacing, arrhythmias, and cardiac cellular electrophysiology of the European Society of Cardiology · 2023Article
- The impact of disclosure of conflicts of interest in studies comparing robot-assisted and laparoscopic cholecystectomies-a persistent problem.Surgical endoscopy · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Conflicts of interest held by researchers remain a focus of attention in clinical research. Biases related to these relationships have the potential to directly impact the quality of healthcare by influencing decision-making, yet conflicts of interest remain under-reported, inconsistently described, and difficult to access. Initiatives aimed at improving the disclosure of researcher conflicts of interest are still in their infancy but represent a vital reform that must be addressed before potential biases associated with conflicts of interest can be mitigated, and trust in the impartiality of clinical evidence restored. In this review, we examine the prevalence of conflicts of interest, evidence of the effects that disclosed and undisclosed conflicts of interest have had on the reporting of clinical evidence, and the emerging approaches for improving the completeness and consistency of disclosures. Through this review of emerging technologies, we recognize a growing interest in publicly-accessible registries for researcher conflicts of interest, and propose five desiderata aimed at maximizing the value of such registries: mandates for ensuring that researchers keep their records up to date; transparent records that are made available to the public; interoperability to allow researchers, bibliographic databases, and institutions to interact with the registry; a consistent taxonomy for describing different classes of conflicts of interest, and the ability to automatically generate conflicts of interest statements for use in published articles.
Identifiers
What 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.