Authorship and Conflicts of Interest in Clinical Trails

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One of the most important issues encountered in research ethics is that of ethical problems in the authorship of clinical trials research. Clinical trials are the principal source of evidence on the efficacy and safety of medical treatments, and they have great financial consequences for manufacturers. Therefore, it is essential that the results of clinical trials be collected and presented in an objective, reliable, and unbiased way. We propose to conduct three surveys of authors of clinical trials. These surveys will examine the relationship between financial conflicts of interest between authors and corporate sponsors of clinical trials and ethical issues concerning the authorship of the paper. We hypothesize that authors who have financial relationships with the manufacturer of the drug or device will have an authorship situation characterized by less control of the trial and its presentation, and less involvement in the writing. The results of this research will provide important data for discussions of editorial policies at scientific journals, for ethical standards and conflict of interest policies at universities and research institutions, and for ethics education in scientific training.