Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:29:47 EDT
MEDLINE Mulls Outing Corporate-Backed Studies
The National Library of Medicine will consider a major revamp of its indexing policies in the wake of revelations that industry-sponsored supplements without full conflict-of-interest disclosures are slipping into MEDLINE, the government-funded database for health studies. The issue arose last week when Integrity in Science Watch revealed a recent supplement in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition was sponsored by the International Life Science Institute's Salt Committee, which is made up of major food corporations. Articles in the supplement did not list the corporate ties of their authors.
MEDLINE's existing policy states any supplement sponsored by "private, for-profit" organizations must contain disclosures before it is indexed. ILSI, though largely funded by industry, is a non-profit organization, thus allowing it to slip through the loophole. "We will review our policy and strongly consider changes that would require author disclosure for any supplement funded by an outside source in the future," NLM head indexer James Marcetich said. "It may not be practical in a large scale production operation like MEDLINE to investigate whether a sponsor represents non-profit, for-profit, or non-profit but funded by for-profit interests -- so it may be best to require disclosure for all outside sources."
