Krimsky believes that all scientists should declare their financial interest in their published research and that all journals should have disclosure policies. There's this tremendous loss of trust at a time when people are trying to sort out competing views in medicine and health care. We're talking about the integrity and the confidence that the public has in science. The only way this can be done fairly is if people are up front with any financial interest they have. Jonathan King, a professor of molecular medicine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, agrees with Krimsky's call for a standard disclosure policy.
Scientific productivity depends on public investment.
Biotechnology is skimming off the profitable cream of this basic core, and in order to keep confidence in the basic biomedical endeavor in the presence of these influences, you have to maintain the strictest standards of disclosure and accurate representation of interests involved. She agrees that there should be disclosure policies. He contends that this is more of an issue for biotech firms. In the past several years, a handful of U.S. journals have begun to call for disclosure. The latest was Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May of last year.