IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0005092.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Obesity, the Endocannabinoid System, and Bias Arising from Pharmaceutical Sponsorship

Author

Listed:
  • John M McPartland

Abstract

Background: Previous research has shown that academic physicians conflicted by funding from the pharmaceutical industry have corrupted evidence based medicine and helped enlarge the market for drugs. Physicians made pharmaceutical-friendly statements, engaged in disease mongering, and signed biased review articles ghost-authored by corporate employees. This paper tested the hypothesis that bias affects review articles regarding rimonabant, an anti-obesity drug that blocks the central cannabinoid receptor. Methods/Principal Findings: A MEDLINE search was performed for rimonabant review articles, limited to articles authored by USA physicians who served as consultants for the company that manufactures rimonabant. Extracted articles were examined for industry-friendly bias, identified by three methods: analysis with a validated instrument for monitoring bias in continuing medical education (CME); analysis for bias defined as statements that ran contrary to external evidence; and a tally of misrepresentations about the endocannabinoid system. Eight review articles were identified, but only three disclosed authors' financial conflicts of interest, despite easily accessible information to the contrary. The Takhar CME bias instrument demonstrated statistically significant bias in all the review articles. Biased statements that were nearly identical reappeared in the articles, including disease mongering, exaggerating rimonabant's efficacy and safety, lack of criticisms regarding rimonabant clinical trials, and speculations about surrogate markers stated as facts. Distinctive and identical misrepresentations regarding the endocannabinoid system also reappeared in articles by different authors. Conclusions: The findings are characteristic of bias that arises from financial conflicts of interest, and suggestive of ghostwriting by a common author. Resolutions for this scenario are proposed.

Suggested Citation

  • John M McPartland, 2009. "Obesity, the Endocannabinoid System, and Bias Arising from Pharmaceutical Sponsorship," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(3), pages 1-7, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0005092
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005092
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005092
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005092&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0005092?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mounir Errami & Harold Garner, 2008. "A tale of two citations," Nature, Nature, vol. 451(7177), pages 397-399, January.
    2. Peter C Gøtzsche & Asbjørn Hróbjartsson & Helle Krogh Johansen & Mette T Haahr & Douglas G Altman & An-Wen Chan, 2007. "Ghost Authorship in Industry-Initiated Randomised Trials," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(1), pages 1-6, January.
    3. Strawbridge, W.J. & Wallhagen, M.I. & Shema, S.J., 2000. "New NHLBI clinical guidelines for obesity and overweight: Will they promote health?," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 90(3), pages 340-343.
    4. Rosie Taylor & Jim Giles, 2005. "Cash interests taint drug advice," Nature, Nature, vol. 437(7062), pages 1070-1071, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nadine Desrochers & Adèle Paul‐Hus & Jen Pecoskie, 2017. "Five decades of gratitude: A meta‐synthesis of acknowledgments research," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(12), pages 2821-2833, December.
    2. Jerome K. Vanclay, 2012. "Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 211-238, August.
    3. Victoria S S Wong & Lauro Nathaniel Avalos & Michael L Callaham, 2019. "Industry payments to physician journal editors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-11, February.
    4. Susan L Norris & Haley K Holmer & Lauren A Ogden & Brittany U Burda & Rongwei Fu, 2013. "Conflicts of Interest among Authors of Clinical Practice Guidelines for Glycemic Control in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(10), pages 1-1, October.
    5. Unruh, Lynn & Rice, Thomas & Rosenau, Pauline Vaillancourt & Barnes, Andrew J., 2016. "The 2013 cholesterol guideline controversy: Would better evidence prevent pharmaceuticalization?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(7), pages 797-808.
    6. Jonathan M. Levitt & Mike Thelwall, 2016. "Long term productivity and collaboration in information science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(3), pages 1103-1117, September.
    7. Zhuoqiong (Charlie) Chen & Tobias Gesche, 2016. "Persistent bias in advice-giving," ECON - Working Papers 228, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Oct 2017.
    8. Susan L Norris & Haley K Holmer & Lauren A Ogden & Brittany U Burda, 2011. "Conflict of Interest in Clinical Practice Guideline Development: A Systematic Review," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(10), pages 1-6, October.
    9. Susan L Norris & Haley K Holmer & Brittany U Burda & Lauren A Ogden & Rongwei Fu, 2012. "Conflict of Interest Policies for Organizations Producing a Large Number of Clinical Practice Guidelines," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-12, May.
    10. John P A Ioannidis, 2008. "Measuring Co-Authorship and Networking-Adjusted Scientific Impact," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 3(7), pages 1-8, July.
    11. Michael McAleer & Judit Olah & Jozsef Popp, 2018. "Pros and Cons of the Impact Factor in a Rapidly Changing Digital World," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 18-014/III, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Zhaohui Sun & Mounir Errami & Tara Long & Chris Renard & Nishant Choradia & Harold Garner, 2010. "Systematic Characterizations of Text Similarity in Full Text Biomedical Publications," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(9), pages 1-6, September.
    13. Thelwall, Mike & Sud, Pardeep, 2016. "National, disciplinary and temporal variations in the extent to which articles with more authors have more impact: Evidence from a geometric field normalised citation indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 48-61.
    14. Salandra, Rossella, 2018. "Knowledge dissemination in clinical trials: Exploring influences of institutional support and type of innovation on selective reporting," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(7), pages 1215-1228.
    15. Antonio García-Romero & José Manuel Estrada-Lorenzo, 2014. "A bibliometric analysis of plagiarism and self-plagiarism through Déjà vu," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 381-396, October.
    16. Sismondo, Sergio, 2008. "How pharmaceutical industry funding affects trial outcomes: Causal structures and responses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 1909-1914, May.
    17. Susan L Norris & Haley K Holmer & Lauren A Ogden & Shelley S Selph & Rongwei Fu, 2012. "Conflict of Interest Disclosures for Clinical Practice Guidelines in the National Guideline Clearinghouse," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-8, November.
    18. Chekhovich, Yury V. & Khazov, Andrey V., 2022. "Analysis of duplicated publications in Russian journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0005092. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.