A Quantitative Analysis of Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Pharmacology Textbooks.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest (CoI) is a standard practice for many biomedical journals but not for educational materials. The goal of this investigation was to determine whether the authors of pharmacology textbooks have undisclosed financial CoIs and to identify author characteristics associated with CoIs.

Methods and findings

The presence of potential CoIs was evaluated by submitting author names (N = 403; 36.3% female) to a patent database (Google Scholar) as well as a database that reports on the compensation ($USD) received from 15 pharmaceutical companies (ProPublica's Dollars for Docs). All publications (N = 410) of the ten highest compensated authors from 2009 to 2013 and indexed in Pubmed were also examined for disclosure of additional co

SUBMITTER: Piper BJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4516247 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature