Financial and Non-financial Conflicts of Interest Among the Japanese Government Advisory Board Members Concerning Coronavirus Disease 2019

  1. Hanano Mamada
  2. Anju Murayama
  3. Akihiko Ozaki
  4. Takanao Hashimoto
  5. Hiroaki Saito
  6. Toyoaki Sawano
  7. Divya Bhandari
  8. Sunil Shrestha
  9. Tetsuya Tanimoto

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Abstract

Objectives

This study aimed to assess the extent of conflicts of interest among the Japanese government COVID-19 advisory board members and elucidate the accuracy of conflicts of interest (COI) disclosure and management strategies.

Methods

Using the payment data from all 79 pharmaceutical companies in Japan between 2017 and 2018 and direct research grants from the Japanese government between 2019 and 2020, we evaluated the extent of financial and non-financial COI among all 20 Japanese government COVID-19 advisory board members.

Results

Japanese government COVID-19 advisory board members were predominantly male (75.0%) and physicians (50.0%). Between 2019 and 2020, two members (10.0%) received a total of $819,244 in government research funding. Another five members (25.0%) received $419,725 in payments, including $223,183 in personal fees, from 28 pharmaceutical companies between 2017 and 2018. The average value of the pharmaceutical payments was $20,986 (standard deviation: $81,762). Further, neither the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare nor the Japanese Cabinet Secretariat disclosed financial or non-financial COI with industry. Further, the government and had no policies for managing COI among advisory board members.

Conclusions

This study found that the Japanese government COVID-19 advisory board had financial and non-financial COI with pharmaceutical companies and the government. Further, there were no rigorous COI management strategies for the COVID-19 advisory board members. Any government must ensure the independence of scientific advisory boards by implementing more rigorous and transparent management strategies that require the declaration and public disclosure of all COI.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.12.21263442: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: The Ethics Committee of the Medical Governance Research Institute approved this study on June 5, 2020. (ID: MG2018-04-0516) Informed consent waived and direct contact to the related organizations, including the Japanese Cabinet Secretariat and the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, were allowed by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Governance Research Institute.
    Consent: The Ethics Committee of the Medical Governance Research Institute approved this study on June 5, 2020. (ID: MG2018-04-0516) Informed consent waived and direct contact to the related organizations, including the Japanese Cabinet Secretariat and the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, were allowed by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Governance Research Institute.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The gender of the board members was verified by the database of medical physician published by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare for the board members with a Japanese medical license (https://licenseif.mhlw.go.jp/search_isei/jsp/top.jsp), the photographs on the official page of affiliated institutions after a manual Google search, as well as news articles such as interview with the board members in the major national newspapers.
    Google
    suggested: (Google, RRID:SCR_017097)
    We extracted the h-index for researchers and physicians using the Scopus database (https://www.scopus.com/freelookup/form/author.uri), or when not accessible, Google Scholar to evaluate the academic performance of individual SNCDC members, as described previously.[12] For financial COI, we examined payment records from pharmaceutical companies.
    Google Scholar
    suggested: (Google Scholar, RRID:SCR_008878)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This study has several limitations. First, due to the limited data availability, the time frame of disclosed pharmaceutical company payments did not overlap concisely with the time frame of advisory board member COI disclosure, as we have acknowledged in this study. Nevertheless, this study still provides insight into the magnitude of undeclared COI among the SNCDC members have with pharmaceutical companies and the Japanese government. Second, we assessed COI between the SNCDC members and the government-funded research grants on infectious diseases from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Although there may be other sources of research grants from the Japanese government, grants for infectious disease studies would most likely directly impact the opinions and suggestions of SNCDC members. Despite these limitations, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study comprehensively assessing financial and non-financial COI among the Japanese government COVID-19 advisory board.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.09.12.21263442v1 on medRxiv