Conflicts of interest and conflicting views on physician compensation: fee-for-service versus salaried medicine.

摘要

When reading a commentary piece, a reader needs to consider the source. How credible is the author? Does he have an agenda? Could there be unconscious bias influencing his point of view? Have potential conflicts of interest been disclosed, or even recognized? Journal article authors, speakers, and the medical comraen-tariat now must function in an era of conflict disclosure. In medical conferences, we read in the syllabi a list of those presenters who are on the payroll of various pharmaceutical companies and other corporate patrons. Similar disclosures are appended to journal articles. What are conference attendees and journal readers supposed to do with this information? Do we require lower P values before accepting the study's conclusions? Should we automatically downgrade the reliability of content if a potential conflict is noted? Is disclosure a mechanism to insulate editors and conference organizers from potentially tainted material?