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Conflict of Interest

A researcher can be brilliant, well-intentioned, and completely compromised at the same time.

Conflict of interest means having a stake in the outcome of your own work. It can be financial — you own stock in the company whose drug you're testing. It can be career-based — your tenure depends on producing results that support the prevailing theory. It can be ideological — you've publicly committed to a position and admitting error would cost you standing. In every case, the incentive to find a particular result competes with the incentive to find the truth.

This doesn't mean every conflicted researcher produces bad work. It means the conditions for bias are present, and humans are remarkably good at rationalising choices that serve their interests. Studies show that financial ties to industry correlate with favourable findings even when researchers sincerely believe they're being objective. The bias operates below conscious awareness — which is exactly what makes it dangerous.

Disclosure is supposed to be the safeguard. In practice, conflicts are routinely minimised, buried in footnotes, or simply left undeclared. Major clinical guidelines have been written by panels where the majority of members had financial relationships with the industries affected by those guidelines. The people setting the rules are the same people profiting from them.

Transparency isn't a nice-to-have. It's the bare minimum.

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