Download - COI bingo
CHRISTMAS 2015: PROFESSIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
COI bingoDaniel S Goldberg assistant professor, Department of Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies, BrodySchool of Medicine, East Carolina University; 2015-16 Honors College Faculty fellow, 600 MoyeBlvd, Mailstop 641, Greenville, NC 27834, USA
I’ve spent years studying, teaching, and writing about conflictof interest (COI). In that time I’ve seen hundreds of justificationsoffered for deep entanglements between physicians or scientistsand commercial industry.Plausible arguments support such relationships, but the actorsin question rarely invoke them. Instead, the standard reasonsgiven often suggest no familiarity whatsoever with thesubstantial evidence base regardingmotivated bias and its impacton human behavior, including physicians’ and scientists’behavior.Any reasonable attempt to justify deep relationships withcommercial industries must begin by acknowledging theevidence rather than trotting out tired justifications that havemostly been contradicted by the evidence. The claim that variousbarriers to such influence are sufficient to prevent it—forexample, individual virtue, institutional management, ordisclosure—is simply not an evidence based view.After reading yet another news story containing the usual sortsof flaccid justifications, I decided to construct a COI Bingochart as a way of both satirizing the rationales offered and
suggesting their typicality: a typicality which, again, contravenesa healthy and robust evidence base.Physicians and scientists often profess a commitment to followthe evidence wherever it leads. Those seeking to justify deeprelationships with commercial industry ought to follow thatdictum and acquaint themselves with the evidence onmotivatedbias and COIs.1-4 Hence, the COI Bingo chart (fig 1⇓).
An earlier version of this chart appears at: https://twitter.com/prof_goldberg/status/630822492416950272/photo/1.Follow DSG on Twitter, @prof_goldberg
1 Dana J, Loewenstein G. A social science perspective on gifts to physicians from industry.JAMA 2003;290:252-5.
2 Cain DM, Loewenstein G, Moore DA. The dirt on coming clean: perverse effects ofdisclosing conflicts of interest. J Legal Stud 2005;34:1-25.
3 Sah S. Conflicts of interest and your physician: psychological processes that causeunexpected changes in behavior. J Law Med Ethics 2012;40:482-7.
4 Sharek Z, Schoen RE, Loewenstein G. Bias in the evaluation of conflict of interest policies.J Law Med Ethics 2012;40:368-82.
Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h6577© BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2015
For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
BMJ 2015;351:h6577 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h6577 (Published 16 December 2015) Page 1 of 2
Feature
FEATURE
Figure
For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
BMJ 2015;351:h6577 doi: 10.1136/bmj.h6577 (Published 16 December 2015) Page 2 of 2
FEATURE
