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      • Record: found
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      Randomised study of the effects of sense of entitlement and conflict of interest contrarianism on researcher decision-making to work with the alcohol industry

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          Abstract

          Background

          It is well established that the tobacco industry used research funding as a deliberate tactic to subvert science. There has been little wider attention to how researchers think about accepting industry funding. We developed, then tested, hypotheses about two psychological constructs, namely, entitlement and conflict of interest contrarianism (CoI-C) among alcohol researchers who had previously received industry funding.

          Methods

          A mixed-methods pilot study involved construct and instrument development, followed by an online survey and nested 3-arm randomised trial. We randomly allocated alcohol industry funding recipients to one of three conditions. In two experimental conditions we asked participants questions to remind them (and thus increase the salience) of their sense of entitlement or CoI-C. We compared these groups with a control group who did not receive any reminder. The outcome was a composite measure of openness to working with the alcohol industry.

          Results

          133 researchers were randomised of whom 79 completed the experiment. The posterior distribution over effect estimates revealed that there was a 94.8% probability that reminding researchers of their CoI-C led them to self-report being more receptive to industry funding, whereas the probability was 68.1% that reminding them of their sense of entitlement did so. Biomedical researchers reported being more open to working with industry than did psychosocial researchers.

          Conclusion

          Holding contrarian views on conflict of interest could make researchers more open to working with industry. This study shows how it is possible to study researcher decision-making using quantitative experimental methods.

          Supplementary Information

          The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-024-18961-5.

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          Most cited references45

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          Industry sponsorship and research outcome.

          Lisa Bero, Jeppe Schroll, Barbara Mintzes … (2017)
          Clinical research affecting how doctors practice medicine is increasingly sponsored by companies that make drugs and medical devices. Previous systematic reviews have found that pharmaceutical-industry sponsored studies are more often favorable to the sponsor's product compared with studies with other sources of sponsorship. A similar association between sponsorship and outcomes have been found for device studies, but the body of evidence is not as strong as for sponsorship of drug studies. This review is an update of a previous Cochrane review and includes empirical studies on the association between sponsorship and research outcome.
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            Public health, academic medicine, and the alcohol industry's corporate social responsibility activities.

            Katherine Robaina, T F Babor (2013)
            We explored the emerging relationships among the alcohol industry, academic medicine, and the public health community in the context of public health theory dealing with corporate social responsibility. We reviewed sponsorship of scientific research, efforts to influence public perceptions of research, dissemination of scientific information, and industry-funded policy initiatives. To the extent that the scientific evidence supports the reduction of alcohol consumption through regulatory and legal measures, the academic community has come into increasing conflict with the views of the alcohol industry. We concluded that the alcohol industry has intensified its scientific and policy-related activities under the general framework of corporate social responsibility initiatives, most of which can be described as instrumental to the industry's economic interests.
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              The Influence of Industry Sponsorship on the Research Agenda: A Scoping Review

              Alice Fabbri, Alexandra M. Lai, Quinn Grundy … (2018)
              Background. Corporate interests have the potential to influence public debate and policymaking by influencing the research agenda, namely the initial step in conducting research, in which the purpose of the study is defined and the questions are framed. Objectives. We conducted a scoping review to identify and synthesize studies that explored the influence of industry sponsorship on research agendas across different fields. Search Methods. We searched MEDLINE, Scopus, and Embase (from inception to September 2017) for all original research and systematic reviews addressing corporate influence on the research agenda. We hand searched the reference lists of included studies and contacted experts in the field to identify additional studies. Selection Criteria. We included empirical articles and systematic reviews that explored industry sponsorship of research and its influence on research agendas in any field. There were no restrictions on study design, language, or outcomes measured. We excluded editorials, letters, and commentaries as well as articles that exclusively focused on the influence of industry sponsorship on other phases of research such as methods, results, and conclusions or if industry sponsorship was not reported separately from other funding sources. Data Collection and Analysis. At least 2 authors independently screened and then extracted any quantitative or qualitative data from each study. We grouped studies thematically for descriptive analysis by design and outcome reported. We developed the themes inductively until all studies were accounted for. Two investigators independently rated the level of evidence of the included studies using the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine ratings. Main Results. We included 36 articles. Nineteen cross-sectional studies quantitatively analyzed patterns in research topics by sponsorship and showed that industry tends to prioritize lines of inquiry that focus on products, processes, or activities that can be commercialized. Seven studies analyzed internal industry documents and provided insight on the strategies the industry used to reshape entire fields of research through the prioritization of topics that supported its policy and legal positions. Ten studies used surveys and interviews to explore the researchers’ experiences and perceptions of the influence of industry funding on research agendas, showing that they were generally aware of the risk that sponsorship could influence the choice of research priorities. Conclusions. Corporate interests can drive research agendas away from questions that are the most relevant for public health. Strategies to counteract corporate influence on the research agenda are needed, including heightened disclosure of funding sources and conflicts of interest in published articles to allow an assessment of commercial biases. We also recommend policy actions beyond disclosure such as increasing funding for independent research and strict guidelines to regulate the interaction of research institutes with commercial entities. Public Health Implications. The influence on the research agenda has given the industry the potential to affect policymaking by influencing the type of evidence that is available and the kinds of public health solutions considered. The results of our scoping review support the need to develop strategies to counteract corporate influence on the research agenda.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Jim McCambridge:
                ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5461-7001
                Jim.McCambridge@york.ac.uk
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Public Health
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Public Health
                Title: BMC Public Health
                Publisher: BioMed Central (London )
                ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2458
                Publication date (Electronic): 24 June 2024
                Publication date PMC-release: 24 June 2024
                Publication date Collection: 2024
                Volume: 24
                Electronic Location Identifier: 1680
                Affiliations
                [1 ]University of York, ( https://ror.org/04m01e293) Seebohm Rowntree Building, York, YO10 5DD UK
                [2 ]University of Newcastle, ( https://ror.org/00eae9z71) Newcastle, Australia
                [3 ]School of Health Sciences, University of Dundee, ( https://ror.org/03h2bxq36) Dundee, UK
                [4 ]GRID grid.430503.1, ISNI 0000 0001 0703 675X, University of Colorado, ; Aurora, CO US
                [5 ]Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences, Linköping University, ( https://ror.org/05ynxx418) Linköping, Sweden
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5461-7001
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9657-9904
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0249-1870
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1893-6651
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8678-1164
                Article
                Publisher ID: 18961
                DOI: 10.1186/s12889-024-18961-5
                PMC ID: 11197317
                PubMed ID: 38914989
                SO-VID: c8e5e5b3-0ff6-4ea2-a4b7-9281fd80e581
                Copyright © © The Author(s) 2024
                License:

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

                History
                Date received : 24 July 2023
                Date accepted : 27 May 2024
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010269, Wellcome Trust;
                Award ID: 200321/Z/15/Z
                Categories
                Subject: Research
                Custom metadata
                issue-copyright-statement © BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2024

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health
                Keywords: conflict of interest,contrarianism,entitlement,industry funding,alcohol industry
                Data availability:
                ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health
                Keywords: conflict of interest, contrarianism, entitlement, industry funding, alcohol industry

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