This NEJM study published a couple days ago addresses the effect of funding and methodological rigor on physicians’ confidence in the results. It’s a prospective, mailed and online survey of board-certified Internal Medicine physicians, in which three studies of low, medium, and high rigor were presented with three different funding sources: none, NIH award, or industry funding.
Thankfully, physicians were less confident and less likely to prescribe the study drug for studies that were of low methodological quality and were funded by industry. Or, so I think. The study authors – and the accompanying editorial – take issue with the harshness with which physicians judge industry funded trials. They feel that, if a study is of high methodological quality, the funding source should not be relevant, and we should “Believe the Data“. Considering how easy it is to exert favorable effects on study outcomes otherwise invisible to ClincalTrials.gov and the “data”, I don’t think it is safe or responsible to be less skeptical of industry-funded trials.
Entertainingly, their study probably doesn’t even meet their definition of high rigor, considering the 50% response rate and small sample size….
“A Randomized Study of How Physicians Interpret Research Funding Disclosures”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22992075