Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest occur in research projects when researchers have coexisting personal, financial, political, and academic interests and the potential exists for one interest to be favored over another that has equal or even greater legitimacy in a way that might make other reasonable people feel misled or deceived. Researchers risk appearing to be negligent, incompetent, or deceptive.

Such conflicts have been best explored in the biomedical literature on cases where academics who benefit financially from industry—through research funding, consultancies, or royalties or by holding shares in companies—are more likely to reach conclusions that favor their corporate sponsors. On some occasions, they have conducted research of lower quality and have been less open to peer review.

Although social scientists may be less likely to have a financial stake in their research areas, they [Page 113]may still need to negotiate financial or contractual relationships with corporations or government agencies. So, should they accept contracts where clients hold a veto over publication? Should they disclose corporate or government affiliations when advising the public or publishing research? Should they assess grant applications from commercial competitors? Many research institutions are developing enterprise cultures that make such conflicts of interest more likely.

Agencies, including professional associations, funding bodies, and university groupings, have developed responses to the threats posed by conflicts of interest. In 2002, the Committee on Assessing Integrity in Research Environments in the United States argued for transparency, urging researchers to disclose conflicts of interest to their institutions as well as in all presentations and publications that arise from their research. Some of these practices were already in place.

Qualitative researchers often use the term conflict of interest to describe role conflicts where their relationships with research participants involve multiple roles as researchers as well as (perhaps) teachers, clinicians, activists, colleagues, or friends. This can occur wherever researchers are embedded as insiders in their research sites, notably in action research. In such circumstances, it may be particularly difficult to negotiate informed consent, guard confidentiality, avoid harm, and convince research ethics committees that the research relationship has not been exploitative.

Institutional conflicts of interest may influence the governance and conduct of research. Some ethically acceptable research proposals might be blocked during the ethics review process because of, for example, a desire by the reviewing institution to avoid legal action. Commercial relationships maintained by research institutions can also place individual researchers in invidious positions; even if individual researchers are not directly compromised by their home institutions' corporate relationships, they could be influenced by the knowledge that their own institutions' financial health may be affected by the results of their research or, at least, may be seen as influenced.