Liza Gross's blog

Why Did the EPA Fire a Respected Toxicologist? A Longtime Defender of Scientific Integrity Speaks Out

Liza Gross — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:39:15 -0700

Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported, the US Environmental Protection Agency forced the director of its Midwest Office to quit after she refused to let Dow Chemical off the hook for stalling on the cleanup of dioxin-contaminated soil stretching 50 miles from its Midland, Mich., plant. Regional Administrator Mary Gade had ordered Dow to dredge a number of dioxin hotspots over the past year and balked at the company’s attempts to negotiate a more comprehensive cleanup as stalling.

Dioxin, a highly toxic, persistent organochlorine, causes cancer and disrupts the immune and reproductive systems, according to the EPA’s own Web site. “Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington,” the Tribune reported, based on “heavily redacted letters” the paper obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Even though Gade’s work won praise from the agency, she was asked to quit or be fired. She resigned. Dow has long resisted a government role in any cleanup, but does not deny its responsibility for dioxin contamination near its Michigan headquarters.

In March, the US House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an investigation into potential conflicts of interest in scientific panels that advise the Environmental Protection Agency on the human health effects of toxic chemicals. The committee identified eight scientists that served as consultants or members of EPA science advisory panels while getting research support from the chemical industry to study the chemicals under review. Two scientists were actually employed by companies that made or worked with manufacturers of the chemicals under review.

Such conflicts, Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) noted, stand in stark contrast to the agency’s dismissal last summer of highly respected public health scientist Deborah Rice, an expert in toxicology, from a panel examining the health impacts of the flame retardant deca. The EPA fired Rice after the chemical industry’s trade group, the American Chemistry Council, complained that she could not provide an objective scientific review because she had spoken out about the health hazards posed by deca.

This trend is neither new nor unique, argues legendary lead researcher Herbert Needleman, a pediatrician and child psychiatrist, in “The Case of Deborah Rice: Who is the Environmental Protection Agency Protecting?” published today in PLoS Biology. With his groundbreaking research on the cognitive effects of lead on children, Needleman laid the foundation for one of the greatest environmental health successes of modern times – a five-fold reduction in the prevalence of lead poisoning in American children.

The EPA summarily fired Rice, Needleman argues, even though it had honored her just a few years before with one of its most prestigious scientific awards for “exceptionally high-quality research into lead’s toxicity.” Why? Because the American Chemistry Council asked the agency to fire her. “EPA, without examining or contesting the charge of bias, complied,” Needleman writes. “There is now no evidence that she ever participated in the EPA proceedings, or was even in the room.” Rice, who is “widely admired by her colleagues for her intelligence, integrity and moral compass,” Needleman writes, will “withstand this insult and continue to contribute to the public welfare.”

But who will protect scientists and public safety from industry pressure and government collusion? In a March 13 letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, Rep. Dingell writes: “The ACC does not assert that Dr. Rice has any pecuniary interest in the human health assessment at issue, and therefore seems to argue that scientific expertise with regard to a particular chemical and its human health effects is a basis for disqualification from a peer review board. This does not seem sensible on its face.” Only time will tell whether Dingell’s investigation, or others like it, will ultimately lead to new laws to safeguard scientific integrity, and public health, from the undue influence of industry.

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New Leadership at PLoS Biology

Liza Gross — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:18:13 -0800

To mark the appointment of the first Academic Editor-in-Chief for PLoS Biology, there are two editorials published in the journal today: the first is from the staff editors who discuss the background to this appointment, and the second is from the Academic Editor-in-Chief himself, Jonathan Eisen. This is also the perfect moment to introduce Theo Bloom as the new Chief Editor of the journal. Theo has been a key figure in the world of open access publishing for several years – most recently as the Editorial Director of BioMed Central. We’re delighted to welcome Theo and Jonathan to PLoS Biology. Here are a few thoughts from Theo about open access and joining PLoS.

“These are exciting times for the open access movement, for the Public Library of Science and for PLoS Biology. A central aim of open access publishing is that copies of research articles not only be made available free to readers but also be deposited into large international databases, from which they can be downloaded, analyzed and re-used by anyone (subject only to proper citation of the original publication). Now, in the US, we are a few short weeks’ from the implementation of the National Institutes of Health new Public Access Policy. This will make it a requirement that researchers whose work is supported by funds from NIH deposit into the open access repository PubMed Central final copies of all manuscripts that are accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals, so that they become publicly available within 12 months of publication. (The Association of Research Libraries has produced a useful guide to the new policy and what researchers must do to comply – but one simple way to comply is to publish in PLoS journals.) In Europe, a similar mandate from the European Research Council means that the researchers it funds must do the same (within six months of publication).

These government-funded agencies are following a lead provided by two large charitable funders of biomedical research, the Wellcome Trust and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, both of whom already require their researchers to make all the original, peer-reviewed research articles produced from work they fund available within 6 months of publication. Importantly, in each case, the organization mandating open access also provides funds and mechanisms to make this possible. And now, that most venerable institution Harvard University has seen its Faculty of Arts and Sciences vote to authorize the deposition of all their work upon publication (individual researchers can opt out, publishing an article exclusively in a journal and not putting it into the departmental repository, but they will have to actively do so – deposition is the default position). Although the Harvard move can be dismissed as being by only one group within one university, it is the first such move by a US university, and many commentators believe that where Harvard leads, others will soon follow.

Since its inception, the Public Library of Science has been campaigning and working to achieve changes such as these, so it is perhaps not surprising that there is an air of celebration around the organization, and we are enjoying the renewed momentum (and publicity) these moves give to the open access cause. For me personally, this is therefore a wonderfully exciting time to be taking the helm as PLoS Biology’s Chief Editor.

But we have another reason for celebration that is much closer to home: PLoS Biology has just appointed its first Academic Editor-in-Chief. Since the launch of this, the first journal from PLoS, it has pushed the boundaries of the traditional relationship between professional editors and academic advisors, by having individual Academic Editors involved in the consideration of every article that is destined for publication. Now we are taking this relationship one step further, by giving the researchers who serve on the editorial board and as Academic Editors a vocal advocate and champion – Jonathan Eisen, who has been a member of the editorial board of the journal from its inception.

The professional editorial team retains overall editorial responsibility for PLoS Biology, and will work with Jonathan as a key community representative to develop the journal and its policies. The editorial from the staff editors explains more details of the plans for this partnership, and the accompanying editorial by Jonathan explains why he wants to take on this new challenge. I am delighted to have this opportunity to welcome Jonathan aboard. I know that I speak for the outstanding team of professional editors who work full-time for the journal in saying that we could not do what we do without the frequent, rapid and incredibly thoughtful help of all of the researchers who serve on the Editorial Board, as Academic Editors and also as reviewers. We will continue to strive to make PLoS Biology an outstanding icon for open access, and we look forward to taking these challenges forward in a new partnership with Jonathan at this exciting time.“

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PLoS Biology 2.0 - Congratulations to Jonathan!

from A Blog Around The Clock on Mon, 2008-02-25 18:52

This is an exciting day at PLoS and, after having to keep my mouth shut for a couple of months about it, I am really happy to be free to announce to the world that my friend and excellent science...

Do Animals Think Like Autistic Savants?

Liza Gross — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:05:20 -0800

When Temple Grandin argued that animals and autistic savants share cognitive similarities in her best-selling book Animals in Translation (2005), the idea gained steam outside the community of cognitive neuroscientists. Grandin, a professor of animal science whose best-selling books have provided an unprecedented look at the autistic mind, based her proposal on the observation that animals, like autistic humans, sense and respond to stimuli that nonautistic humans usually overlook.

In a new essay published today in PLoS Biology, Giorgio Vallortigara and his colleagues, argue that, while Grandin’s book “shows extraordinary insight into both autism and animal welfare,” the question of equivalent cognitive abilities between savants and animals “deserves scrutiny from scientists working in animal cognition and comparative neuroscience.” The extraordinary skills shown by savants are accompanied by deficits in other cognitive domains, which the authors argue is not the case for the remarkable species-specific adaptations seen in some taxa. For example, the Clark's nutcracker can stash whitebark pine seeds in thousands of different sites and recover them up to eight months later. Yet the bird exhibits no cognitive deficits in other areas.

Furthermore, the authors argue, rather than having privileged access to lower level sensory information before it is packaged into concepts, as has been argued for savants, animals, like non-autistic humans, process sensory inputs according to rules--a manner of processing that is a specialized feature of the left hemisphere in humans and nonhuman animals. At the most general level, they argue, “the left hemisphere sets up rules based on experience and the right hemisphere avoids rules in order to detect details and unique features that allow it to decide what is familiar and what is novel. This is true for human and nonhuman animals, likely reflecting ancient evolutionary origins of the underlying brain mechanisms.”

Grandin, who responds to the authors’ critique in a special commentary, suggests that “the basic disagreement between the authors and me arises from the concept of details—specifically how details are perceived by humans, who think in language, compared with animals, who think in sensory-based data. Since animals do not have verbal language, they have to store memories as pictures, sounds, or other sensory impressions.” And sensory-based information, she says, is inherently more detailed than word-based memories. “As a person with autism, all my thoughts are in photo-realistic pictures,” she explains. “The main similarity between animal thought and my thought is the lack of verbal language.”

Grandin calls for further experiments to either confirm or disprove Vallortigara et al.’s hypothesis that birds such as the Clark’s nutcracker have retained good cognition in other domains. Grandin hypothesizes that "birds that have savant-like skills for food storage sites or remembering migration routes may be less flexible in their cognition.” Grandin welcomes the discussion following the publication of her book—we invite readers to join in that discussion by posting their own Reader Response.

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New and Exciting in PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology

from A Blog Around The Clock on Tue, 2008-02-19 16:52

Are Animals Autistic Savants: Do animals have privileged access to lower level sensory information before it is packaged into concepts, as Temple Grandin has argued for autistic savants? Giorgio Vallortigara and colleagues critique this perspective, an...

Celebrate Darwin's Birthday!

Liza Gross — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:03:22 -0800

Sally Hubbard

Today marks nearly 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin in 1809, and Darwin Day events around the world aim to celebrate his scientific discoveries and their positive impact on humanity.

Few scientists are more famous than Charles Darwin—though science is supposed to be about ideas not personalities—and few theories have been more thoroughly investigated than that of evolution by natural selection. And yet nearly 150 years since he published ‘On the Origin of Species,’ Darwin’s “big idea” remains the central organizing theme of biology.

Darwin was not the first person to suggest that species could evolve. In the decades preceding Darwin’s career much debate was generated by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s theory, which proposed that the mechanism behind evolution was the use or disuse of traits. Though Lamarck’s ideas of heredity never gained traction and have since been discredited, Darwin credited him for suggesting that species changed over time as a result of specific mechanisms. Darwin’s remarkable achievement was working out that mechanism—natural selection operating on heritable variation within a population—without knowing what generated that variation. Ironically, Gregor Mendel discovered the genetic basis of inheritance—showing that parental traits are recombined in offspring—around the same time, though Darwin was unaware of this work.

If you do celebrate Darwin’s birthday, spare a thought for Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection who’s own fame pales in comparison to Darwin’s. Wallace independently came upon the idea of natural selection, based on his experience of the wildlife encountered during travels in the Malay archipelago. The tremendous advantages that arise from sharing scientific knowledge shines out from the story of the discovery of natural selection, as Darwin and Wallace were in fact correspondents, and reviewed each other’s work. It was an essay of Wallace’s that prompted Darwin to finally publish his own work on evolution. The fruits of this early example of data sharing and collaboration clearly demonstrate that open access to scientific knowledge is essential if science is to progress as rapidly as possible, allowing us all to share in the discoveries that scientists make on our behalves.

Universities around the world will be hosting lectures and parties to mark the occasion. Visit the Darwin Day website to find celebrations in your area. If you can’t make it to any of the events, you can honour Darwin every day by doing your part to protect the natural world around us. It has taken many millennia for the great diversity of species that currently exist to evolve, yet humans are making quick work of pushing an unprecedented number of species to extinction. We now face a sixth period of abnormally rapid mass extinction, and we have mostly ourselves to blame. Recent reports reveal that even the Galapagos Islands--Darwin's "living laboratory of evolution"--are under threat from human activity.

So get involved – wish people happy Darwin day, make a toast to science or a scientist that you admire over dinner or down the pub. Or, better yet, choose to live an environmentally conscious life to help reverse the rapid decline in biodiversity, and give aspiring young Darwins a chance to make their own biological discoveries.

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Guest Blog: Kafkaesque Bureaucracies Impede Import of Scientific Goods in Brazil

Liza Gross — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:18:20 -0800

PLoS Biology invited Mauro Rebelo, of Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, and Stevens Rehen, of Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, to describe the "nightmare" facing Brazilian researchers, who can wait as long as two years for Customs to release their research supplies.

Kafkaesque Bureaucracies Impede Import of Scientific Goods in Brazil

Mauro Rebelo¹ & Stevens Rehen² Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho¹ e Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas² Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil, 21949-590, srehen@anato.ufrj.br

Brazil is left behind in the run for scientific development due to bureaucratic procedures to release reagents and equipment by customs.

An advertisement fixed at the door of a laboratory in the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the biggest Federal University in Brazil, says: Position available for undergraduate student, prerequisites are: good grades, free time and ‘a lot of passion’ for the job.

It is not euphemism: Being a scientist in Brazil requires much more than a scientific mind. Extra doses of perseverance, creativity, and especially patience are necessary just to get one’s supplies.

Science is technically demanding and it is impossible to be competitive without using state-of-art methods. Brazilian scientists know this very well. Since most of the life science research companies are located in developed countries; the huge majority of the reagents come from abroad. It is easy to purchase the products from the companies. The nightmare starts when the supplies arrive at the customs.

Despite anecdotal stories about the negative consequences of red tape for science in Brazil, some of them already discussed elsewhere (Rehen 2004; Triunfol and Mervis 2004), there has been no data to support this assertion. Here we present for the first time results describing the impact of bureaucracies for the development of Brazilian science.

Biomedical scientists working in Brazil were invited by the Brazilian Federation of Societies of Experimental Biology (FeSBE) and the Brazilian Society for Neuroscience and Behavior (SBNeC) to fill a simple survey at the SBNeC website. Eighty-eight scientists from 16 different Research Institutes and Universities spread over 7 different states participated.

All of them declared the need to import supplies for their research, the majority at least once a month (figure 1A). Perishable items, which require special transportation and storage, make up approximately 70% of imported reagents (figure 1B).

Figure 1C shows that more than 90% of the researchers wait at least 3 months to receive their imported supplies. Since the majority of the required items are perishable, this waiting time risks expiration at the Custom’s desk. In extreme cases (8%), it took as long as 2 years to have the supplies released by Customs.

In 2004, after a fruitful discussion between the Brazilian scientific community and Government, an Express Program to import scientific equipment (Importa Fácil) was created to allow National Research Council (CNPq)-certified scientists to import reagents and equipment faster than before. Unfortunately, several drawbacks, including weight and cost limits (maximum of 30 kilograms, up to USD 15,000) and the exclusion of perishable goods, limited the use of the program to 8% of the scientific community (Figure 1D). Moreover, the scenario described in figures 1 A, B and C explains why 14% of the researchers still prefer to bring goods in their handbags to avoid the unreliable bureaucratic systems (Figure 1D). Despite of being risky, there are few alternatives when “members of the laboratory need reagents to finish his/her thesis within the timeframe defined by the Brazilian Funding Agencies”, said one of the participants.

A Professor of São Paulo State University also said: “…our antibodies had been imprisoned for almost 3 months by the airport authorities. Even after that period, the agents would not release [the antibodies] since they were already out of date (the datasheet said that the validity at 4oC was no longer than 1 month). I had to beg them to let me at least test the reagents before incineration”.

The National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) was pointed out by the Brazilian scientific community as the primary culprit for the testified delays (Figure 1E). ANVISA is a financially autonomous sanitary authority operating under a special regime with an independently administered Board. Its mission is to protect and promote health, ensure the hygiene and safety of products and services, taking part in controlling the access to it. Due to the diversity of imported goods (including everything that the country imports), it is almost impossible for any of the agents to keep updated about every substance. Whenever their agents are in doubt about the risk of any substance or material, they redirect the clearance request to the Central Office at the Ministry of Health, which of course delays the process of clearance. As a result, they forward basically all requests of reagents imported by the scientific community to the Ministry of Health. Meanwhile, the scientific community must pay the government a storage fee for our supplies.

We estimate that 2/3 of all the grants provided to Brazilian researchers are spent with taxes and costs related with storage and release from the customs. It means that public funding goes back to the government without being truly invested in the progress of science.

On November 20th 2007, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva passed a bill requesting no more than 90 days for the Ministries of Health and Science & Technology to solve the problems described above. Thereafter, ANVISA presented new regulations regarding the import of scientific supplies, which may still falls short. Despite being the choice for scientists all over the world, express couriers are prohibited in this case and only the Brazilian postal service can be used. Moreover, rules to discriminate reagents exclusively used in a research laboratory from the ones used in clinical trials or by hospitals are not clear. Finally, the creation of special ports and facilities to storage scientific material, including plants, animals and perishable goods, before complete release, as well as agents trained by the scientific community are so essential as new regulations proposed by the agency.

Despite the increase in scientific investment over the last 15 years (Triunfol 2007), Brazilian scientists may be left behind as consequence of this historical Kafkaesque situation, marked by a senseless and disorienting complexity in which they are immersed. The period following Lula’s statement and ANVISA’s new regulations about the import of research supplies will decide the future of Brazilian’s science.

References:

Rehen SK (2004) Scientific aid to Brazil is strangled by red tape. Nature 428:601.

Triunfol ML (2007) Latin American science moves into the spotlight. Cell 131:1213-1216.

Triunfol ML, Mervis J (2004) Miguel Nicolelis profile. Brazil institute charts a new hemisphere for neuroscience. Science 303:1131-1132.

FIGURE 1.

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Obligatory Readings of the Day

from A Blog Around The Clock on Thu, 2008-02-14 17:08

The elephants in the room: How the GOP lost its way by Hal Crowther Kafkaesque Bureaucracies Impede Import of Scientific Goods in Brazil by Mauro Rebelo Open Science and the developing world: Good intentions, bad implementation? by Cameron Neylon Alter...

Leslie E. Orgel (1927–2007)

Liza Gross — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:58:42 -0800

Guest blog: PLoS Biology invited Gerald Joyce, professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biology at The Scripps Research Institute, to write a brief tribute to his friend and colleague, Leslie Orgel, a pioneer in the study of early life on Earth who passed away October 27, 2007.

Leslie Orgel joined The Salk Institute as a Senior Fellow in 1964, and was a Professor there until he died at age 80 on October 27, 2007. Prior to joining the Salk he was Assistant Director of Research in Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge University, where he developed ligand-field theory as a means to understand the properties of transition metal complexes. Based on that work he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society at the unusually young age of 35. In 1990, one year after becoming a U.S. citizen, he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

At the Salk Institute, Orgel became interested in what distinguishes living systems from non-living things, and how a self-replicating molecule first arose that could pass on life’s genetic blueprint to future generations. He was especially intrigued by RNA, which has the capacity both to store genetic information and to form complex structures. Orgel was among the first scientists, together with his friend and Salk colleague Francis Crick and the microbiologist Carl Woese, to suggest that RNA, rather than DNA, was that first genetic molecule. Writing in the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1968, Orgel further suggested that “precisely defined structures of great complexity can be built using only the standard nucleotides”. Fifteen years later, following the discovery of RNA enzymes (ribozymes), this notion came to be known as the “RNA world”.

As the RNA world hypothesis gained broad acceptance, Orgel expressed new doubts. Attempts to form RNA under laboratory conditions that mimic the primitive Earth had been only marginally successful, and the complexity of RNA suggested to him that perhaps RNA was preceded by an even simpler genetic molecule. Accordingly, he and his coworkers at Salk studied alternative genetic backbones that may have set the stage for RNA. They also studied many other aspects of the origins of life on Earth, including the prebiotic synthesis of the building-blocks of RNA, the joining together of those building blocks to form polymers, and the non-enzymatic copying of RNA.

Orgel’s work on the origins of life also had practical applications. During his studies of RNA analogues, he devised a straightforward way to synthesize cytosine arabinoside (Ara C), a compound that is one of today’s most commonly used anti-cancer agents. He also devised methods for cross-linking proteins and nucleic acids, which have had applications in clinical diagnostics.

In his final scientific contribution, an essay entitled "The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic Earth," published today in PLoS Biology, Orgel critiques an alternate theory on the origins of life, the "metabolism first" model. In his essay, Orgel considers key reactions in the leading metabolism-first models and explains the chemical roadblocks that would make such reactions unlikely—while acknowledging that the validity of his arguments may someday be challenged by experimental evidence.

Orgel is fondly remembered by his friends and colleagues in La Jolla, and throughout the scientific community, for his extraordinary intellect, quick wit, and kind manner—all of which will be keenly missed.

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Moving On

Liza Gross — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:40:32 -0700

It's been almost four years since PLoS launched the first issue of its flagship journal, PLoS Biology, with the ambitious goal of publishing exceptional open-access research across the life sciences, from molecules to ecosystems. The skeptics argued that it just wasn’t possible, but our 14.1 impact factor (all problems with the impact factor duly noted) put the lie to that old argument.

Now, one of the key players in securing PLoS Biology’s success has decided it’s time to take a break from scientific publishing. Managing Editor Hemai Parthasarathy, a neuroscientist by training, is leaving PLoS for a much-needed rest. As Hemai wrote in Bora Zivkovic’s blog (Bora is PLoS ONE’s community manager), “After all, any service industry that results in over 90% customer dissatisfaction (aka high profile publishing) does take its toll.”

Hemai has been with the journal since the beginning and her commitment to serving the scientific community by ensuring scientific integrity and transparency in the editorial process—key elements of PLoS’s core principles—has been an inspiration to those of us lucky enough to work with her at PLoS. And now we’re looking for a new managing editor who can bring the same commitment not just to excellence in scientific publishing but also to the cause of open access. We don't expect it will be an easy task.

PLoS was founded on the principle that turning the world’s scientific and medical literature into a living library—so anyone can not just access the articles but also mine, manipulate, and analyze the underlying data—will open up new avenues of research, stimulate new discoveries, and advance the pace of scientific understanding. Of course, trying to transform the scientific publishing landscape and usher in a new era of scientific discourse in a Web 2.0 world is not a trivial task. But if you’re an experienced manuscript editor who knows your way around the peer review and editorial process in high-profile scientific publishing—and you’re ready to lead the transition into a brave new world of scientific publishing—we’d like to hear from you. And, of course, we wish Hemai the best of luck.

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When Conflicts of Interest Threaten Scientific Integrity

Liza Gross — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:00:27 -0700

The growing commercialization of scientific research has increasingly forced biomedical publishers to grapple with real and perceived conflicts of interest. Every scientist has a competing interest when it comes to getting published in a high-profile journal—a prestigious publication record brings status, research funds, job security, and other personal benefits—but more and more scientific research is funded by companies with a vested interest in the outcome of that research.

A 2003 systematic review of 37 high-impact biomedical journals published in JAMA concluded that “Financial relationships among industry, scientific investigators, and academic institutions are widespread. Conflicts of interest arising from these ties can influence biomedical research in important ways.” Yet, the authors found, in 2001 just 43% of the journals surveyed had policies requiring disclosure of conflicts of interest.

PLoS defines a competing interest as "anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, review, or publication of research findings, or of articles that comment on or review research findings. Competing interests can be financial, professional, or personal; hidden or declared; actual or perceived." PLoS editors may decide not to publish original research or other articles if the editors believe the competing interests may have compromised the work, analyses, or interpretations presented in the paper.

Though the PLoS competing interest policy applies to all PLoS journals, the potential for industry corruption of science raises the most concern among the medical editors. The main difference between medical and basic biology journals is that the research results in medical journals typically have greater practical application. Medical results often have implications for health policy and clinical practice, and might affect the viability of a prospective commercial product when, for example, a study suggests that a prospective drug or chemical in mass circulation poses a risk to human health. For the most part, results published in a more basic biology journal like PLoS Biology do not have such direct implications and potential conflicts. There are exceptions, of course – for example, a set of results might doom a planned development project because it threatens an endangered species.

Industries with a substantial financial interest in the outcome of a study often do everything in their power to protect their interests by funding their own studies and publishing only those results they like, for example, or by manufacturing uncertainty around studies reporting results they don't like, or by attempting to influence the promulgation or implementation of policies and rules at the appropriate regulatory agencies: FDA (drugs), FWS (endangered species), or EPA (toxics). Biases arising from industry-sponsored studies are well documented in clinical medicine. The lastest evidence comes from a recent PLoS Medicine study of potential biases in drug-drug comparisons, which found that randomized controlled trials comparing statins with other drugs are more likely to report results and conclusions favoring the sponsor's product over the other drug in the study.

But knowing a study is industry funded isn't enough. More important is having independent reviewers evaluate the validity of the study design, methods, protocols, and determine whether the conclusions are consistent with the data. This is how rigorous peer review is supposed to work. But peer review can miss fatal flaws in studies—even when authors provide disclosure statements. That's why many researchers working at the intersection of science and policy want to see transparent review processes and independent scientific review panels oversee research results destined for use in policymaking (or drug approval) decisions.

In "Why Not the Best: How Science Failed the Florida Panther" (which I wrote), former Conservation Biology editor Reed Noss argued that endangered species management policies should be modeled after California law, which requires independent scientific review at several stages of the conservation planning process, “so consultants working for counties or developers are not able to get away with using flawed scientific methodologies.” The published reports of such independent reviews can help the public navigate an otherwise impenetrable, seemingly arcane debate.

A new feature article published this week in PLoS Biology called “The Toxic Origins of Disease” (which I also wrote) describes how the chemical industry hired scientists to "replicate" the work of a researcher who reported that in utero exposures to a mass-produced chemical (called bisphenol A) caused developmental and reproductive defects in mice. Industry scientists found no such effects, but when an independent review panel assessed their studies, they found fatal flaws in both study design and interpretation of the results.

Toxicology journals, like medical journals, have a long history of publishing studies biased toward industry interests. Just as a 2003 study published in the British Medical Journal found that “studies sponsored by pharmaceutical companies were more likely to have outcomes favoring the sponsor than were studies with other sponsors”, a 2005 commentary published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that of 115 published studies concerning effects of low doses of bisphenol A in experimental animals, 94% of publicly funded studies found evidence of harm while 100% of chemical industry studies found no evidence of harm.

When researchers have a vested interest in the outcome of a research question, readers have a right to know that information. The 2003 JAMA study reported that industry investment in US biomedical research and development almost doubled between 1980 and 2000, as federal support dropped. As the line between science and business becomes increasingly blurred, transparency about conflicts of interest is the minimum requirement to give readers all the information they need to evaluate scientific results. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has been leading efforts to manage conflicts of interest that allow corporations to exploit the credibility of peer-reviewed journals to advance their own interests. CSPI urges all journals to adopt a strong policy regarding disclosing conflicts of interest and publishing those disclosures “to allow scientists, the public, and policy makers to make more informed judgments about research reports, letters, commentaries, editorials, book and literature reviews, and news articles, and to safeguard the credibility of scientific peer review.” Although such dislosures can't guarantee that policymakers will base their decisions on the best scientific evidence available, they at least flag studies that may require more careful scrutiny.

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