After Disclosure

Abstract

Industry funding of research is the greatest known systematic threat to the objectivity of medical research. This paper clarifies the nature and scope of industry funding bias and attempts to quantify it. It reviews four kinds of remedy for industry bias suggested so far: disclosure, standards and regulation, steps towards independence for all clinical research, and case by case assessments, finding most of them helpful but not sufficient. The paper proposes two possible further interventions to reduce the effects of industry bias: qualitative and quantitative discounting of industry results.