A few weeks ago, I wrote about how several GMO researchers and/or advocates have had their emails seized under Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA). These requests come from US Right to Know (USRTK), who is being heavily funded by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). The OCA is one of the strongest voices opposing GMOs (it also happens to oppose vaccines, too). The emails from one scientist uncovered that he had his expenses paid for by Monsanto when he traveled for talks (which is a standard industry practice), and that his department received a $25K grant from Monsatan for SciComm. The hoopla is over the fact that he claimed not to have any sort of relationship with Monsanto.
In light of this, there has been much talk on what constitutes a Conflict of Interest (COI) and what should be disclosed. This list from the journal PLoS on COIs has been circulated in the twittersphere as an example of what may constitute a COI. I looked over it and was left really confused, primarily because of the phrase I've highlighted in this sentence: "A competing interest is anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to PLOS."
I've read quite a few articles that have covered the FOIAs of these scientists. Many of the articles state that the scientists involved, who did not break any of the COI and disclosure rules in their institutions, could have been more open: that the debate over GMOs is a public debate and the public has different definitions for terms such as "relationship". The issue with this argument is that if you follow the anti-GMO activists who are the loudest voices in the debate and are in the driver's seat in the attempts to discredit these scientists, anything could be perceived by them to be a conflict of interest. Even if you ignore these voices, we all view things differently and, therefore, we will have different perspectives on what may or may not be a conflict of interest if we leave it up to perceptions.
Let's imagine for a moment that these FOIAs had been requested against scientists involved in educating the public on vaccine safety, but that none of the scientists were directly involved in vaccine development. If one of these scientists received a standard 10% discount on a run-of-the-mill enzyme from Roche, would that be a COI given that Roche is also involved in vaccine development? If one of the scientists had a boxed lunch at a conference seminar hosted by VWR (who sells syringes) should that be disclosed? If a researcher had a student who graduated and then went on to work for Merck, would the researcher have a relationship with Merck? Would that relationship suddenly vanish if the former student moved on to a different company? Do researchers have to keep track of where all their former students and friends work to know whether or not they have relationships with different business sectors? I'm sure that each one of these would be perceived to be a conflict of interest in certain circles.
Getting back to the GMO-debate and COI, ten years ago, the spouse worked in marketing for a major fast food company. I'm sure that many anti-GMO activists would consider that to be a COI if I were a GMO research scientist. What if I said that the fast food company was Chipotle? All of a sudden, that would no longer be a problem given Chipotle's shunning of GMOs. PLoS calls for disclosing "Personal convictions (political, religious, ideological, or other) related to a paper's topic that might interfere with an unbiased publication process (at the stage of authorship, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication)". So if I were a reviewer asked to review a paper related to the safety of organic food, would I need to disclose that I refuse to shop at Whole Foods? Is there anything more ideological than refusing to shop at Whole Foods because of the company's stance on GMOs and their support of misleading campaigns against biotech crops?
So, my question to the academic community is this: why are you defining conflict of interest based on the biases of the public? Why is this discussion or public debate being driven by the lowest common denominator? What I'm seeing is that scientists involved in research or outreach with the public on topics where we genuinely need more scientists involved are being penalized by having to disclose far more than what their institutions demand or, more importantly, than what is demanded by scientists in less controversial fields. Dr Kevin Folta recently announced that all his expenses would be outlined online and this is being hailed as a huge step in the right direction. I disagree and think that this will lead to ridiculously long statements of disclosures that scientists feel compelled to provide just to be "safe". Check out this article for an excellent example. At the same time, I'd wager that even if scientists were to provide income tax and banking documents, it will not satisfy those who are quick to call "shill": they'll just come up with some other theory like "the Monsanto office in Switzerland is depositing money into your spouse's Cayman Islands account".
What on earth would motivate an upcoming scientist to engage with the public if these are the standards that they will be held to? We all know that we need more scientists engaging with the public and outreach, and this is a very strong deterrent.
My personal perspective is that all scientists need to be held to the same standards and scientists in specific fields should not be penalized. Holding all scientists to the same standards that Dr McGuire is being held to would mean changing the way we engage with our industry partners and how marketing is done in biotech. No more free t-shirts, industry sponsored journal-club with pizza, those awesome eppendorf pens that look like pipettes, or reagent discounts from a vendor for being a "loyal and preferred customer". Again, I'm not saying that this isn't the direction that academia should move towards, but either a) it should be done universally rather than targeting a select few or b) academia should push back and educate the public on the relationship between academia and the private sector. When the spouse reviewed this article, the other option he offered was 100% public funding of research so that no industry funding or association would be needed. But I'm not sure if that's plausible, given the fact that nearly every reagent, instrument, and often samples that researchers use are made by the private sector. In the case of the private-Ag/public-sector relationships, 100% public funding of research would mean that tax dollars would pay for the testing of Monsanto products, and that public researchers would be the exclusive developers of new plant varieties, neither of which seem right to me.
The bigger issue, in my opinion, is that if COIs are not outlined and detailed and are left to what is "perceived", researchers and scientists are left open to allegations of fraud. Going back to my example of the spouse's former job, if his employment in the fast food industry were a genuine conflict of interest, I probably would not have seen it because I'm too close to the issue and I'd probably feel that his place of employment and income would not affect my research outcomes. However, if we leave it up to what people perceive to be COI, then how is any researcher supposed to assess their biases and COIs when they're all too close to the issues to realize that it might be a problem? Would an editor of a journal have to sit down with every author for a few hours and discuss the researcher's private life to determine if there's any potential conflict of interest before a paper gets published?
Anyway, it's all left me very confused as to what is and is not a genuine conflict of interest.
On a completely unrelated note, if you're looking for a job in the private sector, where you run any questions or issues by HR and legal before setting out on a project outside of work, there are jobs available!
Please feel free to comment below, particularly if you can set the record straight for me on this whole COI business.
When I ran our state's variety testing program, we charged a fee for every private variety tested. We did not charge publicly developed varieties and experimental lines, based on the practice that other states did not charge us for testing our lines. But in many years, certain states sent many more lines to us than we sent for them to test. Is that fair? In essence, the fees from private companies were being used to subsidize the testing of public varieties. Do I have a conflict of interest with each company that submitted lines for testing? I don't think so, but some outside the industry could perceive it to be a conflict.
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