Say It Ain't So, Again - a "Push Poll" to Minimize the Hazards of Conflicts of Interest ...in the New England Journal of Medicine?

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a remarkable series of apologiae for conflicts of interest,(1-4) about which we have published three posts, here, here, and here. Just to ice the cake, the NEJM also set up a reader poll on the subject. Its introduction stated,

we invite you to put yourself in the role of editor and help us decide about the suitability of three hypothetical potential authors of review articles for the Journal.

However, as noted first in a post on the HealthNewsReview.org blog, the poll had a curious design.

Each of the three hypothetical experts has some type of financial arrangement with the pharmaceutical industry – either royalty payments, speaking fees, or commercially supported research at a university that covers everything except the researcher’s salary.

Noticeably absent was a 'Case #4' describing a potential author with no conflict of interest.

IMHO, this seems like a biased survey design. By failing to incorporate a questions about an unconflicted author, the numeric results of the poll could not show whether those answering it would actually favor authors without conflicts of interest. Of course, the whole thrust of the three commentary(2-4) plus one editorial(1) NEJM series was that concerns about such conflicts are overblown.

Nonetheless, the poll allowed for comments, and as the blog post showed, this bias did not escape notice. One commentator, Dr David Newman, wrote

The only reason to choose any of the individuals in these cases would be if there were no available alternatives.

This survey bias did not escape Dr Josh Farkas, who wrote this in a PulmCrit blog post,

Perhaps the most interesting component of the media campaign is the reader poll about the adequacy of various hypothetical authors for a review article. Three potential authors are described, all of whom have significant COIs. The design of this poll itself is biased, by presenting no authors without COIs. A more transparent approach might be to simply ask readers 'do you think review article authors should be allowed to have COIs?'

Thus, the NEJM conflict of interest poll appears to be not an attempt at unbiased data collection, but a "push poll." A "push poll," per Wikipedia, is:

an interactive marketing technique, most commonly employed during political campaigning, in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of voters under the guise of conducting a poll.

By prominently publishing a poll with such a biased design, the NEJM has further supported my argument that its current editors are engaging in polemics rather than scholarly debate about the very important issue of conflicts of interest in medicine and health care. Perhaps the current NEJM editors should consider joining the blogsphere in which polemics abound, while leaving the serious business of scholarly journal editing to those who are more dispassionate.

References
1.Drazen JM. Revisiting the commercial-academic interface. N Eng J Med 2015; ; 372:1853-1854. Link here.
2. Rosenbaum L. Reconnecting the dots - reinterpreting industry-physician relations. N Eng J Med 2015; 372:1860-1864. Link here.
3. Rosenbaum L. Understanding bias - the case for careful study. N Engl J Med 2015; 372:1959-1963. Link here.
4. Rosenbaum L. Beyond moral outrage - weighing the trade-offs of COI regulation. N Engl J Med 2015; 372: 2064-2068. Link here.