Conflicts of Interest in Science: How Corporate-Funded Academic Research Can Threaten Public Health

by Sheldon Krimsky

30+ Years of Peer-Reviewed Studies on the Corporate Ties and Vested Interests that Influence Scientific ResearchFor over 500 years, groups and organizations with political, economic, and personal interests have successfully exercised influence on the pursuit of scientific inquiry and knowledge. History is replete with examples like the Papal authority muddying research into studies of the cosmos, but far less attention is paid today to the various corporate and special interest groups who, through funding and lobbying efforts, have been able to shape the modern academic and scientific landscape to fit their agenda.In Conflicts of Interest Within Science, author Sheldon Krimsky compiles 21 peer-reviewed, academic articles that examine the complex relationship between the individual scientists conducting research and the groups who fund them. Ultimately, Krimsky’s call to action concerns a collective movement among authors, peer reviewers, corporations and journal editors to disclose the sources of their funding. By holding scientists and the groups that fund them more accountable through increased transparency, we as a society can begin to rebuild trust in the integrity of knowledge.

465 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 29, 2019

Reviews

[Angie Reisetter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of essays published over nearly 30 years makes for some interesting reading, but I would have been much more interested in an actual look at the topic and its history, a cohesive book. In the forward, Krimsky labels three eras of COI in science, early middle and late, from about 1980 to the present day, and the essays are arranged in more or less chronological order (although the dates and details of publication are not printed at the beginning of each chapter, which is a little frustrating). But because they were not woven into a cohesive whole, there's a lot of repetition here. Define conflict of interest, define bias, reference the Founding Fathers, do a little historical review each time. Look at conflicts of interest for the DSM 4 authors, oh, now the DSM 5 is coming out, do them too. Let's do a run down of the tobacco industry research case study again. The first time through, that's interesting. Later on, I was flipping pages pretty quickly.

There's a focus on biotech and pharmaceutical companies funding research at universities throughout the book, although there is a section on weapons research. The essay on Science in the Sunshine was most interesting to me, since I only vaguely recall the historical details from when they happened (circa 2010).

So I'm glad I read this. It could just be way better and more interesting with some more work. But it's a collection of essays, and it's pretty good for that. I just didn't realize that's what it was going in (my fault).

I got a copy to review from Net Galley.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tedious collection of articles previously published by the author

This book is an anthology of previously published articles by the author Sheldon Krimsky, frequently as the sole author. Many stories are out of date, dating back to 1984. These articles are written in scholarly tone and many reflect sociological studies done by Krimsky. There is a lot of overlap between the articles and I found myself just flipping pages until the conclusions of the articles which were usually interesting and well written. Also interesting were Krimsky’s ideas of how to fight financial conflicts of interest, but most of the articles were about conflicts of interest involving the pharmaceutical industry, so this wasn’t a good look at conflicts in science overall. The anthology was just interesting enough to keep going, as I was tempted several times to stop reading because of the huge overlap between articles. Ironically, although Krimsky rails against bias, I think that using only articles authored by Krimsky himself introduces a huge bias. I read Corrupted Science by John Grant and found this book by far more enjoyable than Krimsky’s.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

[Jason Wrench · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has written about research ethics and sits on an Institutional Review Board myself, I was very interested to see what Sheldon Krimsky had to say on the issue of conflicts of interest in science. Anyone who has any kind of background in research ethics knows that conflicts of interest are a huge problem in research (especially in the biomedical fields).

As a whole, this book didn't really provide me with any new information, but I definitely think it would be a worthwhile book for those who are interested in academic research, public health, and science. The book is written for a lay audience, so I think people in the general public will find this book interesting and somewhat alarming.