Banning authors who don't declare conflicts of interest

The BMJ reports (21 January) the decision by the editors of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery to ban authors who fail to declare conflicts of interest. Such authors will be banned from publishing in that journal for at least a year.

This follows the discovery that an author failed to declare that he held shares in a company whose product came out well in a trial of inteventions for atrial fibrillation. The author concerned did declare that he had had grants from the company, but did not disclose the 18000 shares that he owned.

>>>Read more in the BMJ