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Presidential address: Research ownership, communication of results, and threats to objectivity in client‐driven research
Author(s) -
Metcalf Charles E.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of policy analysis and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.898
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1520-6688
pISSN - 0276-8739
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1520-6688(199821)17:2<153::aid-pam1>3.0.co;2-g
Subject(s) - objectivity (philosophy) , citation , presidential system , computer science , library science , management , political science , law , philosophy , epistemology , economics , politics
A disturbing saga of suppression of research results came to public light in April 1996 [see King, 1996]. The story began in 1987, when a university pharmacy professor accepted a contract from a pharmaceutical company to test a brand-name thyroid drug (produced by the company) against three less expensive (one brand-name, two generic) alternatives. The professor signed a contract that specified the research protocol and experimental design in detail. The contract also included a confidentiality provision prohibiting publication of the results without client permission. The results submitted in 1990 turned out to be “unfavorable” to the company: The study concluded that the four drug preparations were “bioequivalent,” despite the much higher cost of the company’s formulation. The company responded by: (1) waging a 4-year campaign to discredit the study; (2) denying the professor permission to publish by invoking the confidentiality clause in the contract, forcing the professor to withdraw a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) article 12 days before its scheduled publication in 1995; and (3) publishing the company’s interpretation of the data, without acknowledgment of the original study, in a journal supported in part by the company [see Rennie, 1997]. “Justice” finally prevailed, some 7 years after the study’s completion, under the pressure of adverse publicity [see Altman, 1997a, 1997b; Sternberg, 1997]. The original article was recently published in JAMA after the company withdrew its objections. The study utilized a randomized, four-way crossover trial with a completed sample size of 22; the published article had seven authors [see Dong et al., 1997]. Although this saga involves an extreme compounding of several events in a single study funded by the pharmaceutical industry, elements of the story are common to the broader domain of policy research. Individuals and institutions conducting client-funded research encounter contractual restrictions on their right to disseminate results, and they may face pressure—often subtle—to alter the interpretation of their findings or the content of their reports. These restrictions and pressures may be present whether the client is a private firm, government agency, or foundation.