DeAngelis Catherine
Journal of the American Medical Association, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Methodist Debakey Cardiovasc J. 2011 Oct-Dec;7(4):24-7. doi: 10.14797/mdcj-7-4-24.
I'm going to give you a bird's eye view, as an editor-in-chief, of why conflict of interest in medical research is such a vital problem today in medicine. By the time I am finished, I hope that I will convince you that we physicians and medical scientists need to make sure we take control of our profession to protect our patients in a way that only we can do. The first definition of "conflict of interest" that I could find goes back to 1850 in Webster's Dictionary: "To conflict between the private interests and the official responsibility of a person in a position of trust." That sounds familiar to all of us in medicine, because that's who we are. Why do authors and reviewers have conflicts of interests? Career advancement, peer recognition, competing research interests, competition for research grants, intellectual biases and passions, and financial conflicts that we sometimes let get in the way. Editors have conflicts of interest because we want to promote our journal and improve our "impact factor"--a measure of the average number of citations to articles published in scientific journals. The impact factor is often used to gauge the relative importance of a journal within its field. I would love to do away with this. It is the most manipulative thing in the world because journal editors have to live by it, and departments use the impact factor as a mechanism for promotion. Editors also want to increase subscriptions and increase the financial profitability of their journals; sometimes, they have a conflict of interest because they're trying to eliminate or decrease stress, hostility, or harassment. In fact, I invite anyone who doesn't think a journal editor deals with stress, hostility, or harassment to spend a day with me.
作为主编，我将向你们鸟瞰一下为什么医学研究中的利益冲突在当今医学领域是一个如此至关重要的问题。在我讲完之后，我希望能让你们相信，我们医生和医学科学家需要确保掌控我们的职业，以一种只有我们能做到的方式来保护我们的患者。我能找到的“利益冲突”的第一个定义可以追溯到1850年的《韦氏词典》：“处于信任地位的人的私人利益与官方职责之间的冲突。”这对我们所有从事医学工作的人来说都很熟悉，因为我们就是这样的人。为什么作者和审稿人会有利益冲突呢？职业发展、同行认可、相互竞争的研究兴趣、对研究经费的竞争、智力偏见和热情，以及我们有时会受到影响的财务冲突。编辑也有利益冲突，因为我们想推广我们的期刊并提高我们的“影响因子”——这是衡量科学期刊上发表文章的平均被引用次数的指标。影响因子常被用来衡量一本期刊在其领域内的相对重要性。我很想废除这个东西。它是世界上最具操纵性的东西，因为期刊编辑必须受其约束，而各部门将影响因子作为晋升的一种机制。编辑们还想增加订阅量并提高他们期刊的财务盈利能力；有时，他们存在利益冲突是因为他们试图消除或减少压力、敌意或骚扰。事实上，我邀请任何不认为期刊编辑会应对压力、敌意或骚扰的人来和我共度一天。
