I recently received a paper that compared certain properties, particularly interface pressure measurements, of 4 support surfaces to be used on the operating room table.

One of these required an adjustment for individual patients. However, due to time constraint, they set it for an "average" weight patient and informed the manufacturer they were doing this. The authors' rationale was that most operating rooms would encounter the same issue with this product—ie, no time to make individual adjustments to it.

The results showed that this product performance placed it third out of 4—which may of course be due to the fact it wasn't adjusted according to instructions—a fact they acknowledged in the paper.

My problem is this: the authors sent the paper to the manufacturers of the products used. The manufacturer of the product in question agreed that the author could still use the results but not name the product! I am not happy with this as I believe that:

1. The readers have a right to know the names of all the products tested in order to make meaningful comparisons rather then just guessing what this product may be.
2. The manufacturers have no right to determine the content of a manuscript in such a way, just because their product did not come out in a favorable light.
3. The authors shouldn't be dictated to by the company.

By the way, none of the authors had any financial interest in any of the companies whose products were tested, and the support surfaces were provided to the authors free of charge. However, each company contributed a sum towards the rent of the pressure mapping system.

Any thoughts or comments would be welcome!

Deborah Glover
Editor, JWC

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I agree with you completely. From where I stand, the manufacturer has no power or right to say what can and cannot be included in a manuscript. They may not like it because, as you suggested, it doesn't make their product sound too great, but I don't believe there's anything they can (or should!) do about it, and the readers have a right to know what the product is so they can apply the information to their respective practices.

Kristen King

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There is something the manufacturers can, and indeed should, do, which is to write a letter to the editor. The readers can then make their own minds up. But I agree that they should not be allowed to interfere in the content of the paper.

Krzysztof Gebhardt

Ed Note: See also: Cooper RL, Chriger DL. The availability of references and the sponsorship of original research cited in pharmaceutical advertisements. CMAJ. 2005;172(4).doi:10.1503/cmaj.1031940.
Freely available at: http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/172/4/487

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Was the study was funded by this company? (I can't tell from the description below, but otherwise why would the authors send the manuscript to the company, and why would the company think it had some control over the authors?) If so, then the contract should have had a clause saying that the authors could publish the results of their study as they saw fit. (Some such contracts actually have the opposite—a clause saying that the company has to approve of the contents of the final manuscript). If there was no "freedom to publish" clause, then indeed the company does have a legal right to say what can and cannot be published. That is why at our journal we require a conflict of interest statement, and if there is any question about whether the company had undue influence on the content of a manuscript, we won't publish it.

I do considerable epidemiologic research funded by drug companies, I usually publish the results, and each contract contains a "freedom to publish" clause. Otherwise, I don't sign.

William M. Tierney
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Journal of General Internal Medicine

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