Trial reportBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2019
Effect of revealing authors' conflicts of interests in peer review: randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effects of Experimental Interventions to Improve the Biomedical Peer-Review Process: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2021Pooled it
- Research on policy mechanisms to address funding bias and conflicts of interest in biomedical research: a scoping review.Research integrity and peer review · 2025Article
- Beyond Bias: Aggregate Approaches to Conflicts of Interest Research and Policy in Biomedical Research.World medical & health policy · 2024Article
- Statistical analyses of ordinal outcomes in randomised controlled trials: a scoping review.Trials · 2024Article
- Article
- Psychology's medicalization of male baldness.Journal of health psychology · 2022Review
- Industry influence in healthcare harms patients: myth or maxim?Breathe (Sheffield, England) · 2022Review
- The impact of mandatory conflict of interest disclosures on editors' manuscript acceptance decisions: A cross-sectional observational study.Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open · 2022Article
- Do we really know how many clinical trials are conducted ethically? Why research ethics committee review practices need to be strengthened and initial steps we could take to strengthen them.Journal of medical ethics · 2021Review
- Breastfeeding and the origins of health: Interdisciplinary perspectives and priorities.Maternal & child nutrition · 2021Article
- Moving towards less biased research.BMJ open science · 2021Article
- Reducing bias and improving transparency in medical research: a critical overview of the problems, progress and suggested next steps.Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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
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 (M
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.
Indexed as
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.