@twilyth

The article you're referring to is biased and it has an agenda. The authors are diminishing the patient safety perspective and the taxpayers' concern over how their tax money is spend. Further more, the authors wants to obscure the main problem by shifting perspective from donor-recipient to recipient-recipient -- without telling the readers. This is done by focusing on replacing the words "conflict of interest" with the words "confluence of interest". In doing so the authors are aligning the viewpoints of the recipients of the money, the scientists and the commercial interest groups. There never was any conflict between the recipients, so the only plausible conclusion from this sort of card shuffling is that the article is written by lobbyists, with the sole purpose of obfuscating the main conflict -- the one between the donors and the recipients of tax money -- by pointing to other potential conflict of interests. While true, these other potential conflict of interests pale in comparison to any conflict of interest where money is involved, and corporations tend to be single-minded when it comes to all matters involving money.


However, thanks for the link, since it validates our request for more transparency:

"The primary interest of the biomedical scientific endeavor is to benefit patients and society. Frequently, this primary interest coincides with secondary interests, most commonly financial in nature, at the interface of the investigator’s relationship with a private sponsor, typically a drug or device company or, increasingly, venture capital firms. Academia and the public have become sensitive to how such a secondary interest might be unduly influential, biasing the interpretation of results, exposing patients to harm, and damaging the reputation of an institution and investigator."
//
"Disclosure of such information on institutional websites and its provision in consent forms to participants in trials would help the public to visualize the complexity of such relationships and aid individuals and institutions to promote confluence of primary and secondary interests with the objective of minimizing bias. Irrespective of such efforts, disclosure is necessary but insufficient; it can serve to mitigate, but not to avoid bias."

@TBMS - It's clear that your pervasive ignorance of the underlying reality of how scientific and medical research works prevents you from understanding the issues involved. And since your ignorance seems to be willful, it's obvious that continuing to engage you on this subject is pointless since even in the unlikely event that you should realize your error, you're obviously the sort of person who would never admit it.

So please feel free to believe that you've "won" this argument. I'm sure you would believe that in any case.

I will anxiously await the eventual implement of your uninformed and misguided requests.

What makes you think you are entitled to more transparency? Your reason is that it must be so and your suggestion that it cannot be any other way, because you think so.

You are volunteering here. You don't get to drive the bus. We are on the trailer behind the bus. You get TO participate or TO NOT participate. That is the entire decision-making latitude you have at WCG, and not one ounce more.

As for transparency, is it a suggestion or is it a right? You can't seem to make up your mind. If you have a suggestion, state clearly what you want WCG to do. BTW, we are still waiting on that. This rambling thread is NOT clear. If its a right, clam your pie hole.

You don't set policy. You don't get to demand letters from scientists. That's just insulting. You don't get your wants to be fulfilled. There are 7+ year old requests for website changes still unfulfilled. You are not going to be compensated for donating spare cycles. There are 90,000 or so active members and maybe 89,500 of them don't even know you exist. So, two conspiracy theorists don't equal critical mass here, anyway.

we don't want to drive d bus!
but we r NOT on a trailer behind a bus...
we POWER d bus...if u can't image, here's a pic:


so we'd like to know where bus is going?
& we'd like that this bus only says WCG & free ride...not to get some "extra", when we all get to a finish line!

after we get to a finish-line, a driver can make something for a future path...& future path can be "profitable", but all past travel "should not"!

enough of metaphors?

Well, it's good to see that you're evolving. Maybe after another couple dozen iterations you'll actually be little closer to understanding things. It's amazing how exposing yourself to sources other than the ones that reinforce your own pre-held biases can yield such results, isn't it?