Dale D. Murphy, ISA Hawaii 2005
-9-
difficult to discern. Can we really believe that clinical researchers are more immune
to self-interest than other people?
4
Can we really believe that social scientists are any more immune than are medical doctors?
Likewise, the Deputy Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA),
Drummond Rennie, concludes that 'academic-industry ties are common, and evidence
exists that financial considerations bias the research record' (Cho, Rennie, et al. 2000).
See also the editorial jointly published 13 September 2001 by NEJM, JAMA, and
ten other top US and European medical journals. They opine:
4
Angell, 'Is Academic Medicine for Sale?', 2000: 1518. T. Bodenheimer (same issue of
NEJM) details some of the widespread biases which review studies have unearthed. See
also Lewis Powell's 1971 manifesto.
'The academic enterprise has been a critical part of the [objective] process . . . but
as economic pressures mount, this may be a thing of the past. . . . Corporate
sponsors have been able to dictate the terms of participation in the trial--terms that
are not always in the best interests of . . . the advancement of science generally. . . .
These terms are draconian for self-respecting scientists, but many have accepted
them because they know that if they do not, the sponsor will find someone else who
will. Such issues are not theoretical.'
The international studies literature might similarly turn its analytic gaze inward and
examine if the source of scholars' funding was correlated with the questions they asked and
Convention