"We found that physicians downgraded their perceptions of industry funded research similarly for high-quality studies and low-quality studies," explained Aaron Kesselheim, MD, JD, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at BWH, and principal investigator of this study.
The research team presented abstracts describing hypothetical clinical trials of three fictional, but potentially useful, new drugs to a national sample of board-certified internal medicine physicians. Each abstract was randomized to demonstrate high, medium, or low methodological rigor and randomized to report one of three disclosure variables: funding from a pharmaceutical company, funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), or no disclosure listed. The investigators then assessed physicians' impressions of the trials' rigor, their confidence in the results, and their willingness to prescribe the drugs.
"We found clear associations between the funding disclosure variations and physicians' perceptions of a trial's rigor and results," explained Dr. Kesselheim.
The results showed that physicians downgraded the credibility of industry-funded trials when compared with the same trials that had no funding listed, and to an even greater extent when compared with the same trials characterized as having NIH funding. The authors attributed these results to high-profile instances of unethical behavior by pharmaceutical companies sponsoring clinical research in the past decade.
Researchers emphasize that these findings have important implications. The pharmaceutical industry funds a substantial portion of clinical research, and a key determinant of the impact of a trial should be its methodological rigor, not its funding source, Dr. Kesselheim and his co-authors argue.
"While there is good reason to be extra vigilant about industry-funded research, if physicians are reluctant to trust all such research, this could hinder the translation of even high-quality industry-funded research into practice. Strategies such as greater transparency and independent review of trial data could be pursued to try to change such attitudes among physicians," Dr. Kesselheim suggested.
This research was supported by a grant from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, a career development award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (K08HS18465-01) and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research (both to Dr. Kesselheim), a fellowship at the Petrie–Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School (to Dr. Robertson), and a grant from the National Cancer Institute (2R25CA092203-08, to Dr. Rose).