Beyond conflict of interest. Transparency is the key.

Conflict of interest is being taken more seriously by doctors and by society at large. The New England Journal of Medicine has twice recently been heavily criticised for failing to declare authors’ conflicts of interest—despite its declared policy of doing so.1,2 Last week the BBC halted a £360 000, well reviewed television series because of a “potential conflict of interest”: the producer owned commercial property featured in the series.3 Despite the rising concern, medical journals have done an indifferent job in tackling the problem.4 Four years ago I wrote an editorial arguing that we had to do better,5 and we began then to require all authors to sign forms declaring conflicts of interest. Unfortunately authors often fail to declare conflicts of interest. This issue of the BMJ contains a collection of material on the subject, and we are proposing new policies.

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[30]  L. Opie.  Conflict of interest in the debate over calcium-channel antagonists. , 1998, The New England journal of medicine.