JAMA's Inadequate Response

David Armstrong of the Wall Street Journal followed up his scoop (see yesterday's post if you didn't see the original story) with a report on the Journal of the American Medical Association's plans to "toughen up" its conflict-of-interest disclosure rules. Pretty damn weak, in my view, which was reported in the paper. Here's the relevant parts of the story:

Under the journal's new guidelines, its authors -- often medical researchers from top-flight universities and hospitals -- are instructed to more broadly report their connections to drug companies and medical-device makers. Some critics say the measures don't go far enough and called for a publication ban on authors who fail to disclose they are receiving money from industry. . . . "Authors should err on the side of full disclosure," the new policy states. JAMA has experienced at least three cases this year where authors failed to disclose industry ties.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group, published a report two years ago that found JAMA had the highest rate of nondisclosure of conflicts among four medical journals studied. Merrill Goozner, who studies scientific integrity for the center, said the JAMA changes were inadequate and urged the journal to adopt penalties such as a three-year publishing ban on authors who don't disclose industry ties.

"It's clear that [JAMA] does not evaluate conflict-of-interest disclosures when articles are submitted," Mr. Goozner said. "As a result, some authors with blatant conflicts of interest apparently feel they can ignore the journal's policy with impunity."

Mr. Goozner said the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, a group including the editorial heads of the most prominent journals, should agree to apply a ban by one of its members to all of its members.
. . .
Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor in chief, says she is averse to a publication ban, but she rejected the idea that offending authors go unpunished. She says in several cases where researchers failed to disclose industry ties, she asked the medical schools where they work to investigate their behavior. In some cases, those probes resulted in sanctions, she said.

"We take this very, very seriously," Dr. DeAngelis said, but added she is "not an FBI agent" and "there has to be a certain level of trust" between the publication and authors who publish their research in it. "The day that certain level of trust disappears, I will hang it up," she said.

Memo to Dr. DeAngelis: That's how the Securities and Exchange Commission treated the accountants before Enron. And look what it got them: Sarbanes-Oxley.

We could use a Sarbanes-Oxley for medical research. But that's a subject for another day.