Wikipedia says, "A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other." (Those are my italics for emphasis.) A conflict of interest exists whether or not the organization is corrupted by a tie to a company; if the possibility is there, it is defined as a conflict of interest regardless. This is definitely a touchy, convoluted topic. One of my friends commented on an example of this in a comment to my previous post - physicians often receive compensation for recommending certain drugs to patients. The potential for "possible corruption" here is huge. Another example in biomedical engineering would be if a research institution is determining if a new company's implant performs just as well or better than an implant already on the market, if the institution is receiving extra funds from the company who manufactures the implant. In the world of health food, conflicts of interest arise as well. In Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes refers to an incident where Fred Stare, founder and chair of the department of nutrition at Harvard, announced to Congress the benefits of breakfast cereals, after which the Harvard School of Public Health received about $200,000 from Kellogg, Nabisco, and others. Of course Harvard is going to want to continue to generate positive results about cereal grains! This may influence their study design, statistical analysis, among other things.
These conflicts of interest with companies are probably not too surprising. As a graduate student in biomedical engineering, I have the opportunity to present my research at conferences, where many share their work as a poster or at a podium presentation. On the first day, everyone receives a booklet that contains the abstracts for every single research project at the conference. In it, on the posters, and during the presentations, scientists are required to list any "disclosures," which would include conflicts of interest such as the ones I described above. I always think of these as some type of disclaimer, and I hope that peer reviewers look at these studies more closely, especially how the data was collected and interpreted, to be sure that there isn't any bias before they are published and the results reach the general public. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's always the case...
Recently, a good friend shared this link: The NIH will not require universities to create websites detailing researchers' financial ties. This is going to make it more difficult for the public to find out what conflicts of interest universities have. Also, we won't be able to easily study how conflicts of interest can impact research results, an area that I think definitely needs massive attention.
The thing I don't understand is how funding from the government is not generally considered a conflict of interest. The National Institute of Health (NIH) boasts to be the largest source of funding for medical research in the world. To get funding from them, you have to submit grants that show extensive background research in the area, novel experimental methods, preliminary data (sometimes), and expected outcomes. The thing is, the government clearly has an agenda, just as any hip implant or pharmaceutical company. For instance, the government has taken a clear stance on spades of nutritional advice - limit total fat intake to 30% of calories, limit saturated fat to no more than 10% of total calories, choose vegetable spreads instead of butter, replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats whenever possible, eat whole grains instead of refined grains, eat egg white instead of the entire egg... I could go on and on. Now, do you think they would have any chance funding a large study that tries to disprove any of the previous advice? If a grant were submitted that outlined all of the research done that opposes these ideas, and even if they had a great study design that would hopefully reveal some interesting results, do you think they would receive funding?
I doubt it. So much for the scientific method and unbiased research for the benefit of the people.
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