PerspectivesHas “Publish or Perish” Become “Publish and Payment”? Navigating Neurosurgical Research in an Innovative Industry
Section snippets
Patient Perception of Conflict
The initial inclination would be to exclude physicians with conflicts from research on related industry products. However, this would be extreme and would prevent the necessary interaction between physicians and industry. Furthermore, assessments of public views on health care COIs do not favor such measures. Fisher et al.8 conducted a survey of individuals visiting a spine health website to determine opinions on physician-industry relationships in research. Among 501 respondents evaluated,
Disclosure Versus Management
Disclosure of COIs has become a mainstay for presentations, participation in conferences, and publications of research. Although this represents progress, it does not solve the issue of inappropriate influence on research results. In a review of this topic, Tierney et al.9 noted that one of the principles for ethically credible academic-industry partnerships is to “[e]nsure that effective mechanisms exist to eliminate, control or manage conflicts of interest….” In their publication on COI, the
Examples of COI Management
There are multiple examples of methods for minimizing and managing COI in the neuroscience literature. Large, randomized trials involving industry are the most obvious examples. For example, SWIFT PRIME, a large randomized clinical trial to demonstrate the efficacy of mechanical thrombectomy in stroke, was funded by Covidien (now Medtronic, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA), the company that produces the Solitaire stent retriever.10 This study was an open clinical trial; however, it used
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Cited by (1)
Commentary on: Is Industry Funding Associated with Greater Scholarly Impact Among Academic Neurosurgeons? by Eloy et al. World Neurosurg 103:517-525, 2017