King's College wrote to professor James Coyne that they did release PACE trial data for the Cochrane review (by Larun et al.).
What they forgot to mention is that the three principal investigators of the PACE trial, just like the principal investigator of the FINE trial, it's sister trial, were involved in writing the protocol for the Cochrane review of their own trials ...
(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD011040/full)
And the principal investigator of the FINE trial, was also part of the PACE trial group
Trial Steering Committee ...
That in essence is Cochrane's impartiality ...
Artificial dissemination.
ReplyDeleteCochrane Policy re Conflicts of Interest:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cochrane.org/editorial-and-publishing-policy-resource/conflicts-interest-and-cochrane-reviews
1. General principle
Cochrane Reviews must be free of any real or perceived bias introduced by any financial relationships or other relationships or activities that readers could perceive to have influenced, or that give the appearance of potentially influencing the Cochrane Protocol or Review.
There should be a clear barrier between the production of Cochrane Reviews and any funding from commercial sources with financial interests in the conclusions of Cochrane Reviews. All entities that constitute The Cochrane Collaboration accept this general principle as a condition of participation in the organisation.
2.1. If a potential conflict of interest is declared
Disclosing a conflict of interest does not necessarily reduce the worth of a Cochrane Review and it does not imply dishonesty. However, conflicts of interest can influence judgements in subtle ways and in some cases disclosure alone is insufficient. Authors should let the editors of their Cochrane Review Group know of potential conflicts even when they are confident that their judgements were not or will not be influenced. Editors may decide that disclosure is not warranted or they may decide that readers should know about such a conflict of interest so that they can make up their own minds about how important it is. Decisions about whether or not to publish such information should be made jointly by authors and editors. The Funding Arbiter or Editor in Chief should be consulted where there is doubt, or no agreement between the parties.
2.1.2. Direct financial interest
Authors with a direct financial interest in a particular intervention should not be involved in a Cochrane Review of that intervention.
2.1.3. Cochrane Review author also an author on a study listed in the review
Being an author of a study or studies that may be eligible for a Cochrane Review does not exclude that person from authoring a Cochrane Review. However, this should be disclosed in The Cochrane Collaboration's disclosure of potential conflicts of interest form and therefore the Cochrane Review. Also, there should be an independent assessment of eligibility and risk of bias by a second author who was not involved in the study/studies. The co-author would not necessarily be the contact author for the review, but could act as a ‘guarantor’.
They Might not see it as a conflict of Interest but anybody else will and rightly so
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