PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - M Doucet
AU  - S Sismondo
TI  - Evaluating solutions to sponsorship bias
AID  - 10.1136/jme.2007.022467
DP  - 2008 Aug 01
TA  - Journal of Medical Ethics
PG  - 627--630
VI  - 34
IP  - 8
4099  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/34/8/627.short
4100  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/34/8/627.full
SO  - J Med Ethics2008 Aug 01; 34
AB  - More than 40 primary studies, and three recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses, have shown a clear association between pharmaceutical industry funding of clinical trials and pro-industry results. Industry sponsorship biases published scientific research in favour of the sponsors, a result of the strong interest commercial sponsors have in obtaining favourable results.Three proposed remedies to this problem are widely agreed upon among those concerned with the level of sponsorship bias: financial disclosure, reporting standards and trial registries. This paper argues that all of these remedies either fail to address the mechanisms by which pharmaceutical companies’ sponsorship leads to biased results—design bias, multiple trials with predictable outcomes, fraud, rhetorical effects and publication bias—or else only inadequately address those mechanisms. As a result, the policies normally proposed for dealing with sponsorship bias are unable to eliminate it. Only completely separating public clinical research from pharmaceutical industry funding can eliminate sponsorship bias.