Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15963

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Greenland S.
Accounting for uncertainty about investigator bias: disclosure is informative: How could disclosure of interests work better in medicine, epidemiology and public health?
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2009; 63:593-598
http://jech.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/63/8/593?etoc

Abstract:

Biasing of studies towards results desired by the investigators-investigator bias-arises from many sources, from outright data fabrication to subtle and even unconscious bias in design and analysis choices. Investigator bias has had an important impact in some areas of clinical practice, and can be a major source of uncertainty about study effects. Among the sources of investigator bias, empirical studies have suggested that estimates of effect are often associated with funding source. Disclosure of financial ties thus supplies predictive information about study results. Although this predictability does not by itself say which results are more or less biased, it does stand as a potentially important source of study variation, and hence is needed for full uncertainty assessments. The key problem is then fair use of disclosure data by the evaluator. Fair use will require a clear understanding that predictive power at the group level should never be used for indictment . . .