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Conflict of Interest: It’s Not Just for Psychiatry Anymore

Studies of cancer treatments were more likely to report improvements in overall survival when the investigators reported some kind of financial conflict of interest, researchers said.

Analysis of 124 oncology clinical trials showed that those with a conflict of interest — either direct industry funding or an author’s declarations of financial relationships — were more than twice as likely to find significantly improved patient survival, according to Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., of the University of Michigan, and colleagues.

The finding emerged from an online report in Cancer covering conflicts of interest in more than 1,500 oncology studies in major journals during 2006.

Among 52 randomized, controlled trials with no conflict of interest, 14% found significantly better survival with the intervention relative to control, 72% found equivalent survival, and 6% significantly favored the control.

In 72 similar trials with a conflict of interest, 29% found in favor of the intervention, 61% showed no difference, and none reported better survival with the control (P=0.04 for trend relative to nonconflicted studies)….

Margaret Soltan, May 11, 2009 2:51PM
Posted in: conflict of interest

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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