When trial authors write Cochrane Reviews: competing interests need to be better managed

Ref ID 121
First Author M. Kliner
Journal COCHRANE DATABASE OF SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS
Year Of Publishing 2014
URL https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.ED000089/full
Keywords • Cochrane
• Author
• Allegiance
• General medical
Problem(s) • Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing
• Financial conflicts of interest of review authors
• Non-financial conflicts of interest of review authors
Article Type Editorial
Article Subtype Discussion piece
First Author Country United Kingdom
Aim To assess the degree to which Cochrane Review Groups ensure that competing interests are managed in line with the Cochrane guidelines for dual authorship (review author is also an included study author) using an audit of all new Cochrane Reviews published from September 2013 to March 2014.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings 14% (28/197) of Cochrane reviews had one or more authors who were also authors on trials of included studies. Of these 28 reviews, 68%(19/28) recorded the competing interest in the methods section or as one of the declarations of potential conflicts of interest. Eighty-two percent (23/28) comply with the Cochrane guidance at the time, in that eligibility and risk of bias were independently assessed by a second author not involved in the studies. However, in eight studies, the dual author was one of the two people extracting data. This means only 53%(15/28) of recent reviews will actually fully comply with the most recently issued Cochrane guidance.
Number of systematic reviews included 197
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 197
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description