Have I been wrong all these years in thinking that ‘declarations of competing interest’ were intended to prevent any deliberate (or even inadvertent) misrepresentation of findings or conclusions in research studies? Your final sentence1 requires the declaration of all competing interests, be they financial, political, religious or even related to being a public servant or academic. This is getting dangerous!
None of us can be sure our opinions, however carefully formed, can be entirely free of bias, but we should not be prevented or inhibited from expressing them by some supposed higher ‘authority’ (current notions of ‘PC’, or the editor, perhaps?), or by fear of provoking bias in the reader. Smith et al.2 point out that ‘we are all conflicted’ but their paper shows that the bias in interpreting the presented facts is as much in the reader as in the author(s). If we follow the path you propose will not all further scientific progress be inhibited?
Footnotes
Competing interests None declared (I'd rather be damned!)
References
- 1.Abbasi K . Declare all or be damned . J R Soc Med 2009. ;102 :43. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Smith R, Feachem R, Feachem NS, Koehlmoos TP, Kinlaw H. The fallacy of impartiality: competing interest bias in academic publication. J R Soc Med 2009;102:44–5 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]