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"Non-financial conflicts of interests in psychiatric research and practice" (Maj, 2008) & BJ Psych

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
I just learned, via a James C. Coyne blog, of the following (see bolded bit) in the BJ Psychiatry's "Instructions for authors"
(http://bjp.rcpsych.org/site/misc/ifora.xhtml):

Declaration of interest

All submissions to the Journal (including editorials and letters to the
Editor) require a declaration of interest. This should list fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in, or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, an organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the paper. It should also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious, or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the study, their spouses or partners and their children (aged under 18). We recommend use of the disclosure form developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for this purpose.


I also just read the following Br J Psychiatry paper which is free at:
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/193/2/91.long :


Non-financial conflicts of interests in psychiatric research and practice.

Br J Psychiatry. 2008 Aug;193(2):91-2. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.108.049361.

Maj M.

Abstract

Not all conflicts of interests affecting psychiatry are financial in nature.


Our field is vulnerable to some varieties of nonfinancial conflicts of interests.

Examples include the possible conflict between a researcher's allegiance to a school of thought and the integrity of psychotherapy research, or between a psychiatrist's political commitment and patients' welfare.

PMID: 18669986 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Free full text

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The paper is only two pages long, and doesn't require any mathematical or scientific knowledge, so should be fairly accessible.

I have got frustrated that some people have only brought up financial conflicts of interest as a possible problem in the ME and CFS field.
 

Simon

Senior Member
Messages
3,789
Location
Monmouth, UK
Just pulled out this quote from that paper where he talks of the:
...possible conflict between the secondary interest represented by the researcher’s allegiance to a given school of thought and the primary interest represented by the progress of science. The impact of this ‘allegiance effect’ on the outcome of psychotherapy research has been repeatedly described. A systematic review8 found that the combination of three measures of researcher’s allegiance accounted for 69% of the effect size of treatment

8. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1093/clipsy.6.1.95/abstract
This problems of allegiance-to-theory bias seems to be dicussed surprisingly often in psychological research, though I haven't ever seen this translating to researchers disclosing allegiance-to-thoeries in 'conflict of interest' declarations.
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
A systematic review8 found that the combination of three measures of researcher’s allegiance accounted for 69% of the effect size of treatment

So,

(very modest subjective 'therapeutic' effect) x (100 - 69%) = ?

:whistle:
 
Messages
13,774
(very modest subjective 'therapeutic' effect) x (100 - 69%) = ?

Yeah - a lot of this sort of research leaves me thinking "Medicine needs to be made smaller". We shouldn't be routinely using treatments unless there's really good evidence that they're going to do more good than harm, and we often do not have that. If it is being made clear to a patient that they are trying an experimental treatment which may do more harm than good, and are provided access to the available data, then patients can make up their own minds about how to proceed.