Monday 23 August 2010

What do you mean, no conflict of interest?

An interest to declare – go to the UK Freedom-2-choose blog for this one. These people were heavily involved in the 2010 UK National Smoking Cessation Conference that took place in Glasgow in June. Yet they feel they have no interest to declare when writing to protest to the government that their services are being cut.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

They do not have a conflict of interest --- A conflict suggests the signers have differing agendas --They don't, they all sing from the same hymn sheet and conflict will only begin when funding is reduced and the bitching begins.
Roll on the redundancies!!!!

Belinda said...

In my book there is a conflict. Private versus public interest.

Michael J. McFadden said...

The idea that almost all of them have listed their connections to pharmaceutical nicotine replacement therapy and yet feel they can claim "no competing interests" is absolutely absurd.

I once wrote an article for a Canadian newspaper and an M.D. wrote in two days later accusing me of hiding my connection with the Smokers Club and its Big Tobacco connections. Well, first of all, the Club didn't have any such connections, and second of all I certainly had no financial connections with the Club (other than I think I once donated $25 when they were in a bad way and I was not at that time), and third of all, the ONE true "competing interest" that might be pointed at, my book, was listed right under my name in the original piece as plain as day!

Check out the PLoS piece on Stanton Glantz's competing interests and the Aftercomments to it (I have one there with 14 reference links... LOL!) At some point shortly after that Glantz published another article with them and they evidently leaned on him to 'fess up. He listed the most excruciatingly painful statement about how all his conflicts weren't really conflicts but he was listing them anyway.

:>
Michael J. McFadden,
Self-made gazillionaire from "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains" but I gave it all to hungry smokers on the street...

Michael J. McFadden said...

Whooops... forgot the PLoS link.

http://www.plosmedicine.org/annotation/listThread.action?inReplyTo=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F3a22438c-206d-4e3a-8019-f362a1b23203&root=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F3a22438c-206d-4e3a-8019-f362a1b23203


It's kinda long... hope it works for folks!

:)
Michael

Anonymous said...

It works OK Michael, I cut and pasted it from your comments above.

http://www.plosmedicine.org/annotation/listThread.action?inReplyTo=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F3a22438c-206d-4e3a-8019-f362a1b23203&root=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F3a22438c-206d-4e3a-8019-f362a1b23203

Michael J. McFadden said...

After Pam and I and several others weighed in over at PLoS on Glantz's "no competing interests" statements he had another article published by them. Evidently our work had an effect because THIS time the article devoted quite a significant piece of front page space to Stanton declaring his competing interests while at the same time trying to make them sound like they were NOT competing interests. Kudos to PLoS for responding to our feedback!

See the bottom right quarter of the first page at:

http://assets0.pubget.com/pdf/19636359.pdf

for Glantz's "effort" to be transparent....

Heh... it reminds me of the behavior of a little kid who resents being told to clean their room better and then gets a gallon of bleach and just pours it all over the floor with the defense, "Well you TOLD me to clean more!"

- MJM