One in four authors published in medical journals fail to declare conflicts of interest, such as payments from pharmaceutical companies, according to the first Australian study to examine non-disclosure.

Researchers from the University of Sydney looked at 120 randomised controlled trials investigating drugs or vaccines and involving patients from January to August 2020 and compared authors’ declared conflicts of interest in medical journals with the Medicines Australia payments to doctors database. 

They found there were 89 missing or incomplete conflict of interest declarations from 78 of the 323 authors (24.1%) of 46.6% of trials. 

Half of the authors had inconsistent statements declaring no conflicts of interest, while 43% had partial declarations that omitted payments.