Krimsky, Sheldon, L.S. Rothenberg, P. Stott and G. Kyle. 1996. "Financial Interests of Authors in Scientific Journals: A Pilot Study of 14 Publications." Science and Engineering Ethics, 2, pp. 395-410.
396: Attendees at the section on industrial science of the 1951 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement Science heard a vice president of Georgia Tech predict: "We may envision a time when industry and education are so closely related and so inter-woven that it may be difficult to tell whether an individual is a worker in industry, or a faculty member in college, or whether he is a teacher or a student, and as a matter of sober fact he may be all four over a year's time." Emerson, C. L. 1952. "The Contributions of Industry to Scientific Education." in Industrial Science: Present and Future." (AAAS: Washington D. C.): pp. 113-24.
396: Two 1986 reports found that in the United States university industry research relations had become increasingly important to both parties. Almost half the biotechnology firms surveyed had such relationships and a financial support may "account for 16 to 24 percent of all external support for university research in biotechnology."
396: Observers may no longer see the universities as sources of impartial disinterested knowledge that deserve public support and freedom to use as support as they see fit. Blumenthal, D. 1994. "Growing pains for new academic/Industry Relationships." Health Affairs, 13: 3, pp. 176-93.
398: They used a database of every article published in 1992 by 14 meeting life science and biomedical journals that have a first or last author who was affiliated institution was located in Massachusetts. They tried to determine the frequency with which the authors and articles satisfied that condition of processing a financial interest. Then they examined the articles for any disclosure of financial interest.
An author was said to possess the financial interests if he or she was a member of scientific advisory board of the company that develops products related to the scientists expertise or was listed as the inventor on a patent for patent application for a product or process closely related to the scientists publication under review or serves as an officer director or major shareholder in a for-profit corporation involved in the commercial activities related to the scientist's field of expertise.
These indicators do not exhaust the possibilities. They were unable to include personal or familial investment holdings consultantships or honoraria.
They studied 1105 journal authors. 112, or 10.1 percent were listed as inventors on patents were patent applications that correlated published article in the study. 69 authors were scientific advisory board members of Massachusetts biotechnology companies 6.2 percent. Fifteen authors served as company officers directors were major shareholder or 15.3 percent of the author population at least one financial interest in their published article.
In the new reference population 789 articles, at least one of the lead authors and was identified with one or more of the three categories of financial interest. Twenty percent of the articles have a lead author on the scientific advisory board of Massachusetts biotechnology company. Seven percent had a lead author who served as an officer and major shareholder in a biotechnology company. Twenty-two percent had a leave author was listed as an inventor in patent for patent application closely correlated with the publication in the study all in all 34 percent of the articles met one of the three criteria satisfying conditions of having at least one author with financial interest.
Note that these scientific advisory boards only in Massachusetts companies. Many scientists in Massachusetts are on scientific advisory boards of out-of-state United States companies or even international companies.
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu