{"id":387,"date":"2008-06-03T11:46:09","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T10:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/06\/03\/liz-wager-would-you-review-a-paper-by-your-ex-husband\/"},"modified":"2014-07-29T10:19:44","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T09:19:44","slug":"liz-wager-would-you-review-a-paper-by-your-ex-husband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/06\/03\/liz-wager-would-you-review-a-paper-by-your-ex-husband\/","title":{"rendered":"Liz Wager: Would you review a paper by your ex-husband?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/lizwager.jpg\" alt=\"Liz Wager\" width=\"162\" height=\"110\" align=\"left\" \/>Perhaps we shouldn\u2019t be surprised by the <a title=\"Macmillan ignored smoking warning \" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/health\/7427001.stm\">revelation<\/a> (from recently released official papers) that the UK Government wanted to suppress findings about the dangers of smoking because it was worried about the possible effect on tax revenues. It\u2019s a great example of the fact that absolutely everybody has some sort of interest in research findings. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Journal conflict of interest policies tend to focus on obvious financial links with drug companies but other interests are often just as important, yet trickier to disentangle.<\/p>\n<p>When I run publication courses I like asking whether somebody should review a paper by her ex-husband. It must happen, but I\u2019ve never seen this sort of disclosure.<\/p>\n<p>I also wonder about ex-students whose former supervisors may either be charmed by their success or gleeful to see them stumble, in either case muttering \u2018I taught him all he knew \u2026\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>As a reader, I\u2019d like to see more disclosures of relevant non-commercial interests. Maybe somebody could adapt <a title=\"Facebook\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\">Facebook<\/a> so that journal editors could tell, at a glance, who potential authors and reviewers have ever worked for (or with) and who their friends and enemies were.<\/p>\n<p>I know that sounds ridiculous and way too intrusive but, until then, it\u2019s a case of reader beware \u2013 everybody\u2019s got competing interests.<\/p>\n<p>Have your say on the blog.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About Liz Wager<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Liz Wager is a freelance writer, trainer and publications consultant who works<br \/>\nfor a number of pharmaceutical companies, communication agencies, publishers and academic institutions. She is also the Secretary of COPE (the Committee On<br \/>\nPublication Ethics) and a member of the BMJ\u2019s Ethics Committee.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read Liz&#8217;s previous blogs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Training and the placebo effect\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/05\/13\/liz-wager-training-and-the-placebo-effect\/\">Training and the placebo effect<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Researchers behaving badly\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/04\/18\/liz-wager-researchers-behaving-badly\/\">Researchers behaving badly<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps we shouldn\u2019t be surprised by the revelation (from recently released official papers) that the UK Government wanted to suppress findings about the dangers of smoking because it was worried about the possible effect on tax revenues. It\u2019s a great example of the fact that absolutely everybody has some sort of interest in research findings. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/06\/03\/liz-wager-would-you-review-a-paper-by-your-ex-husband\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1404],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liz-wager"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}