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Sep 3, 2009 04:35 PM | 4
Hardly isolated from commercial ties, researchers in the ivory towers—and labs—of U.S. universities receive an average of $33,417 of funding a year from medical device, pharmaceutical and other medical industry companies, according to a study published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study analyzed data from a 2006-2007 survey of 1,663 academic researchers, and also found that those faculty who led clinical trials of medicines or devices (principal investigators) did even better—receiving upward of $110,000 a year from industry sources—more than a quarter of their average research funding.
"Highly educated people may be more likely to feel they aren't susceptible to influence," Eric Campbell, a study author and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told Bloomberg News, "but there's a huge literature to suggest it happens."
And the study found accordingly: among researchers with ties to the industry—whether they were financial or informational—"a substantially greater proportion documented positive outcomes" in their studies, write the authors, Campbell and Darren Zinner of the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy and Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. It's tricky to know what to make of this correlation as respondents also reported that industry help "contributed to their most important scientific work," they note.
"There are some well-documented negative effects of industry funding, but a large portion of these people have reported that they think it helped lead to important scientific discoveries," Campbell told Bloomberg.
Disclosure of industry ties is not currently required by many institutions, even in clinical trials. And recent investigations have revealed that ghostwriting of "researcher-penned" journal articles paid for by pharmaceutical companies may be commonplace.
The funding of academic medical research has become a tense topic in recent months, especially as money for grants has become more scant.
Despite these challenges, the survey did find that research in general is thriving at academic medical centers. And a sizable portion of researchers—22 percent—don't receive any outside funding at all. As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka the economic stimulus package) and in an effort to streamline health care, Congress earmarked $1.1 billion in government funds for medical research, which may help while other budgets are tight.
Cutting off industry funding, however, may not be the best scientific solution, as the authors write, "Current policies and initiatives to restrict academic-industry relationships should balance the advantages to clinical development against the threats of scientific integrity."
Image courtesy of iStockphoto/dra_schwartz
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4 Comments
Add CommentNow I get it! Since they have summers off, they had plenty of time to go to town hall meetings and rant against health care reform.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople's opinions and biases are influenced by the company they keep. Big companies invite influential persons to parties and other social gatherings to increase the impact of business attuned socio economic behaviour and biases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes not matter how smart the person, constant association with business interests will bias the person to the goals of the big spenders.
When we see the figures on how many "psychological studies" having no industry support came to ridiculous conclusions (that somehow still manage to permeate the public consciousness), then we'll have a basis for comparison. Every day, the headlines are full of these studies that invariably confuse association with causation. Who is funding those? Maybe industry-funded projects have higher standards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExactly where is the research funding going to come from if not drug companies? Scientific research needs funds from somewhere and NIH and NSF grants are not sufficient to run every lab or pursue every promising research lead.
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