Financial disclosures of authors involved in spine research: an underestimated source of bias.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Reporting financial disclosures has become standard practice in both journal publications and during oral forum at scientific meetings. Despite this, the effect of reporting a financial disclosure of any member of an authorgroup, on the tone of the conclusion of an article has gained little attention. This study was performed to determine what effect reporting a financial disclosure has on the conclusion of an article.

Methods

A literature search for all articles on interspinous devices and cervical disc prostheses, published from January 1st, 2008 until December 1st, 2010 was performed. Financial disclosures were reported, as were funding by commercially active parties. The tone of the conclusions was graded as positive, neutral or negative.

Results

The od

SUBMITTER: Bartels RH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3389119 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature