I note that you have changed the threshold for determining whether the author has competing financial interests. 1 I would agree that this has been a fairly arbitrary level. Having said that, I do not know what your level has been in the past. What I would like to suggest is that you simply ask the authors to declare how much money in total they have received from all particular companies over the last five year period. If this material is presented to the readers, the readers would be in the position to make their own decision as to whether there was a conflict of interest. If someone has received $3 000 from a company, to my way of thinking it is much different than if they received several million dollars over five years. In the latter case, I would be prepared to believe that the physician may be seriously influenced by that level of income. It is my view that it would be a regressive step to abandon thresholds and I would urge you to go for total transparency, which would allow readers to make up their own minds on these matters.
Footnotes
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For the full letter, go to: www.cmaj.ca/cgi/eletters/181/1-2/11#215069
REFERENCE
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