Two-thirds of studies on 'psychosocial' treatments fail to declare conflicts of interest

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/uoc-tos112015.php

Public Release: 25-Nov-2015
Two-thirds of studies on 'psychosocial' treatments fail to declare conflicts of interest
University of Cambridge

Health services in many countries increasingly rely on prescribed 'psychosocial interventions': treatments that use counselling techniques to tackle mental health issues, behavioural problems such as substance abuse, and assist parents with new or troubled children.

These highly-regarded therapeutic and educational programmes, devised by senior academics and practitioners, are sold commercially to public health services across the world on the basis that they are effective interventions for people in need of support - with the evidence to back them up.

However, the first study to investigate conflicts of interest in the published evidence for intervention treatments has revealed that the majority of academic studies which assert evidence of effectiveness list co-authors who profit from the distribution of these programmes, yet few declare a conflict of interest.

In fact, the new research shows that as many as two-thirds of the studies that list a co-author who financially benefits from sales of said treatment programmes declare no conflict of interest whatsoever.

•••••

"Researchers with a conflict of interest should not be presumed to conduct less valid scholarship, and transparency doesn't necessarily improve the quality of research, but it does make a difference to how those findings are assessed," said Eisner.

•••••