conflict of interest

December 1, 2017

”A few days ago, I received an urgent warning from a longtime contact in Sweden. An industry associate had told him that the U.S. National Toxicology Program’s study on cell phone cancer risks was screwed up and essentially “useless.”

I was tempted to disregard it as nothing more than a corporate delusion. But the original source was said to be Maria Feychting, a professor at the Karolinska Institute and the vice chair of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). She had cast doubt on the landmark $25 million NTP RF–animal study in a talk presented at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences —the institute that awards the Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry every year.

I decided I had to check out the rumor.

June 21, 2017

“WHO, RFR and Health —A Hard Nut To Crack (Review),” International Journal of Oncology, posted June 21, 2017.

By Lennart Hardell. A review of WHO and ICNIRP’s roles in the ongoing evaluation of RF and health. Includes details of a March meeting with WHO’s Maria Neira, who denied there are any conflicts of interest at work. Open access.

September 12, 2016

“Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents,“ JAMA Internal Medicine, published online September 12, 2016.

“This historical account of industry efforts demonstrates the importance of having reviews written by people without conflicts of interest and the need for financial disclosure.” From Stanton Glantz’s Center for Tobacco Research. Open access. More than 10 years ago the electric utility industry paid Leeka Kheifets $50,000 for a literature review.

March 15, 2016

“Financial Conflicts of Interest and Study Results in Environmental and Occupational Health Research,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, March 2016.

“[F]inancial relationships are clearly associated with the direction of reported scientific findings.”

March 3, 2016

“Influence of Author’s Affiliation and Funding Sources on the Results of Cohort Studies on Occupational Cancer,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine, March 2016.

“Our study demonstrated that the cohort studies on occupational exposures and cancer published by authors belonging to the private sector (industry or consultant), or funded by the private sector, concluded significantly less often that an excess of risk of cancer was found than those published by authors affiliated to universities or public institutions. Furthermore, private authors more frequently downplayed the risk in the Conclusion section of the abstract, as compared to the Results section, than public authors did.”

June 25, 2015

COI Statement for IARC’s RF Review Updated

Lancet Oncology, the journal which published the official announcement of IARC’s decision to designate RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen, has issued a correction to the conflict of interest (COI) statement it had included for...

May 21, 2014

“Time To Turn the Tide: WHO’s Engagement with Non-State Actors and the Politics of Stakeholder Governance and Conflicts of Interest,” (letter), British Medical Journal, May 19, 2014.

Judith Richter of the University of Zurich’s Center for Ethics, asks: “Why do member states find it acceptable that an international public agency can be funded by corporate donors?” See also her related commentary in Social Medicine.

April 23, 2014

Canadian Conflict-of-Interest Follies:Anything Goes Except Non-Disclosure

In 2011, Health Canada found itself in a tough spot. The public was becoming more and more uneasy over exposure to RF radiation from the proliferating number of cell phones, cell towers and Wi-Fi routers. After holding hearings in the spring and fall of 2010, Parliament asked the health agency to investigate whether its exposure limits —the Canadian national RF standard known as Safety Code 6 (SC6)— were too lenient and needed strengthening. Soon afterwards, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) added urgency to the assignment by classifying RF radiation as a possible human cancer agent, or, in the vernacular, a 2B carcinogen.

Health Canada’s dilemma was that it had no interest in tightening SC6. Yet IARC’s 2B designation could not be easily ignored, especially after France and Belgium, among other European countries, had responded by adopting precautionary policies. Last year, for instance, Belgium banned the sale of cell phones to children. How would Health Canada find a way to stick with the status quo?

The answer was to commission a review of SC6 by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) …

March 2, 2014

“Lo Scienziato che Perdona il Diesel e la Diossina,” (in Italian: The scientist who forgives diesel and dioxin.) lI Venerdi, La Repubblica’s magazine (No.1354), February 28, 2014, pp.48- 51.

Riccardo Staglianò profiles Paolo Boffetta, “The Devil’s Advocate,” currently the director of the Institute for Translational Epidemiology at Mount SInai Hospital in New York City.

February 25, 2014

Lost Research Opportunities

Five years ago we reported on what we thought was an important clue in the search for understanding the well-documented association between childhood leukemia and EMF exposure. A team based in Shanghai presented evidence that children carrying a genetic variation linked to DNA repair were four times more likely to develop leukemia than those without that genetic marker. We called the finding a “major breakthrough” and predicted, “It simply cannot be ignored.”

We were wrong. So wrong.

What happened next —or rather, what did not happen— sheds light on why EMF research treads water and never moves forward.

October 25, 2011

Repacholi's RF Review

Last year, sensing that the upcoming IARC assessment might undercut his legacy at both the WHO and ICNIRP, Mike Repacholi assembled a team to prepare its own assessment of the possible tumor risks from RF radiation: That review has just been released by the journal...

May 22, 2011

IARC Drops Anders Ahlbom from RF–Cancer Panel

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has removed Anders Ahlbom of the Karolinska Institute from its panel of experts which is set to evaluate the cancer risks posed by mobile phones. The committee will meet in Lyon, France, for a week beginning this coming Tuesday, May 24. In an e-mail sent out earlier today, Ahlbom wrote, "IARC has excluded me from the RF Working Group because of 'possible perception of conflict of interest'."

September 23, 2006

Journal Editor Steps Down After Conflicts Revealed

When we wrote (September 21) that conflicts of interest among journal editors are not being addressed, we were neglecting the case of Charles Nemeroff, the editor-in-chief of Neuropsychopharmacology. Nemeroff is the chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University medical school in Atlanta.

As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this summer, a favorable review by Nemeroff of a device to treat depression, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, failed to disclose his ties to Cyberonics, the manufacturer of the device. The fact that his six academic coauthors had ties to Cyberonics, as the medical journal later revealed, was also left unmentioned; the eighth coauthor works at the company.

September 21, 2006

Journals Address Conflicts of Interest

More and more scientific societies are considering adopting disclosure rules to shed light on potential conflicts of interest. Environmental Science & Technology reports that the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society are weighing such a policy, while the Society for Risk Analysis is now requiring authors to sign conflict-of-interest statements. These three groups publish Geophysical Letters, Journal of Climate and Risk Analysis, respectively.

September 18, 2006

Industry Studies Tend To Come Up Empty

There's an old English saying that goes "He who pays the piper calls the tune."

This also applies to cell-phone health studies according to a new analysis by a team from Switzerland's University of Basel. In a paper accepted for publication in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), Matthias Egger and Martin Röösli and coworkers found that: "Studies exclusively funded by industry reported the largest number of outcomes but were least likely to report a statistically significant result...compared to studies funded by public agencies or charities."

Their analysis is based on 59 experimental studies published between 1995 and 2005. They note that a majority (68%) of these studies reported biological effects. Egger and Röösli advise that "the interpretation of the results from existing and future studies of the health effects of [RF] radiation should take sponsorship into account."

August 7, 2006

“Radiation Research” Stands Pat

The trend continues. The August issue of Radiation Research is out and it has two papers on the possible effects of RF/microwave radiation, one from Finland and one Sweden. In each case, no effects were found. (See our July 31 post.)

July 31, 2006

“Radiation Research” and The Cult of Negative Results

Radiation Research is a scientific journal whose primary focus is on ionizing radiation, with only a minority of papers devoted to the non-ionizing side of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its June issue, however, features five papers, all of which claim to show that EMFs of one type or another have no biological effects.

A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

conflict of interest: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )