Our special double issue in Jan/Feb about the ties between prominent epidemiologists and private industry has set new records with thousands of subscribers seeing and sharing our content through our website or on Facebook. And epidemiologists are not of one mind about the existence of conflicts of interest or what to do about them if they occur.

This March issue reports on the feedback received, a commentary defending the late Pat Buffler and work in private practice more generally, and two letters from co-drafters of ethics guidelines for the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.

Readers are invited to weigh in on one or more of these articles. Email your comments to epimon@aol.com.

Readers Give Their Quick Takes On Conflicts Of Interest

On The Special Responsibility Of Population Scientists

To the Editor:

“The same principles that apply to clinicians, times 7 billion, ought to apply to population scientists. To clarify further, I assume we can all agree that minimizing conflicts of interest (COIs) for clinicians is so extremely critical for patients so they can feel safe and reassured that they receive the best possible treatment. By extension then, population scientists (whose actions/research affect not one patient at a time, like it is the case with clinicians, but they affect entire populations!) ought to be even clearer on their COIs and in fact, because of the tremendous impact their research may have, it should not be acceptable for them to have any COIs at all (reported or not).”

Eva Schernhammer, MD, DrPH
Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School          

On The Influence Of Money In Epi Research

To the Editor:

"Obviously keeping secrets about influences of any sort is bad in itself. But the pervasive underlying problem is that noted in the last paragraphs. My defining image of academic public health was how the discussions of "research" at the faculty meeting of a major SPH (one Prof Buffler herself helped build) consisted of nothing but celebrating grant income and talking about how to get more. There was literally no mention of actual research.
 
When the mindset is all about celebrating more money, with work being merely a way to get more money, why is it any surprise that the field attracts (or creates) people who follow the money? 

But it does not stop there. The dominant money (the grants) are treated as if they have no influence on what research is done and what results are sought, when the diametric opposite is true. When the pervasive attitude is that seeking the overtly and explicitly corrupting money (that which is based on doing particular research that the funder favors and getting the "right" answers) is the goal of the profession, it seems rather hypocritical to get so excited about hidden speculative conflicts of interest that result from relationships." 

Carl V. Phillips

 

Good Science Is Good Business

To the Editor:

“I have worked in industry for years and take my epidemiology very seriously. I have found that in industry good science is good business. It is very important to industry to assure good science is used to evaluate risk from their products and processes. If there is a problem, industry wants to know it first. Likewise, if there is no problem, this needs to be championed.”

Jim Collins
Dow Chemical

 

On Temporality

To the Editor:

“The sine qua non of epidemiologic causation analysis is temporality. Why is there a conflict of interest if a scientist first develops an opinion or approach based on the science and after that an industry asks him/her to present that opinion or approach before a public forum.  It is the opinion that caused the industrial association, not vice versa. We must be careful about which came first.”

Steve Lamm
Consultants in Epidemiology and Occupational Health

 

Reader Comments:
Have a thought or comment on this story ?  Fill out the information below and we'll post it on this page once it's been reviewed by our editors.