Further to my last article “Can back pain be cured with antibiotics?”, remember how I said talk of a Nobel prize might be premature, and that we need to see if these results can be repeated? Well, today I came across this article:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/health/back-pain-study-fails-to-declare-link-20130526-2n5cz.html
Unfortunately, the authors of the two papers discussed apparently didn’t declare a conflict of interest. No matter how small it may appear to themselves, any conflict should always be declared when authoring a paper. Whilst it doesn’t necessarily mean that we should ignore their results, it does raise a shadow over their results. Many people have unfortunately made this mistake previously, notably Andrew Wakefield, when he failed to declare his financial interest in a mono-valent vaccine that stood to profit by discrediting the MMR vaccine that was in use.
Declaring a conflict of interest does not negate that conflict, but it does, at least, make it public knowledge. The bigger sin is to not declare it. Now, unfortunately, this paper has lost some credibility.
As I said before, let’s wait and see if it can be repeated.
John
