Justin Bekelman and Dr. Cary Gross, researchers at Yale, said they found "strong and consistent evidence that industry-sponsored research tends to draw pro-industry conclusions".
Industry-funded meta-analyses tend to be less transparent, have more methodological flaws, and make more pro-industry conclusions regarding drugs than do independent meta-analyses [34].
Echoing industry conclusions, the CPSC insists the human risks are nonexistent.
2 Numerous studies have since confirmed an association between conflicts of interest and pro-industry conclusions in articles.
Disproportionately pro-industry conclusions, biased study design, and suppression of negative results are overt ways in which industry-funded research has developed a poor reputation.
Recent systematic reviews of the influence of financial interests in medical research concluded that there is a strong association between industry sponsorship and pro-industry conclusions (Bekelman et al. 2003; Yaphe et al. 2001).
Industry sponsorship is discussed as being associated with the following factors: selection of inappropriate comparators, selective reporting of more favourable per protocol analyses, pro-industry conclusions, as well as restrictions on publication and data sharing [ 63- 65].
Bekelman et al found, in a review of reviews, that those with financial conflicts of interest were more likely to report a result in favour of pro-industry conclusions, with an odds ratio of 3.60 (95 % CI 2.63 to 4.91) [ 12].
Another assessment a meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Bekelman et al. (2003), pulling together results from eight other articles that collectively assessed a total of 1,140 studies found additional support for the "happy talk" hypothesis, namely, a clear and statistically significant association between industry sponsorship and pro-industry conclusions.
Mr. Kleynhans said it was misleading to draw an industry conclusion from the combined warnings of Dell, Intel and Apple, which he said were each dealing with different factors.
That said, it is hard to draw industry-specific conclusions, because the sample sizes for some groups were relatively small.
