We read the article on ‘Tackling Conflict of Interest and Misconduct in Biomedical Research’ [1] with keen interest and would like to congratulate the author for succinctly emphasizing the utmost importance of competing interests in biomedical research. In this regard, we would like to add that while financial conflicts of interest have been talked about more often and have been under increased scrutiny by regulatory bodies, the scientific world also needs to acknowledge and appreciate the non-financial conflicts of interest that frequently threaten the objectivity of biomedical publishing. In recent years, non-financial conflicts of interests have been highlighted [2,3] as potential influencers of biomedical research. Non-financial conflicts are poorly defined, heterogeneous and mostly subjective, and hence inherently difficult to detect, acknowledge and control. They can exist anywhere in the chain of research, right from institutional review boards arbitrarily accepting/rejecting proposals based on personal relations to reviewers choosing to sit on papers of scientific competitors under the veil of blinded peer review. Often they can be as subtle as the religious [3] or moral beliefs of the reviewer or the ’academic self-interest’ of the investigator [2]. In this connection, the instructions to authors [4] of Indian Pediatrics mention that, "conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition and intellectual passion." Interestingly; however, while there are regulatory guidelines for financial competing interests, non-financial conflicts of interests have remained a gray area, with utmost reliance placed on disclosure and subjective integrity of the authors, reviewers and editors. It is important to realize that such conflicts are intrinsic to research, and are mostly too subjective and arbitrary to be readily quantified by an objective measure. Hence the need of the hour is the acknowledgement of their existence and sensitization of all concerned stakeholders about voluntary self-reporting/disclosure of any such existing conflicts.

1. Dadhich JP. Tackling Conflict of Interest and Misconduct in Biomedical Research. Indian Pediatr. 2012;49:527-31.

2. Levinsky NG. Nonfinancial conflicts of interest in research. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:759-61.

3. The　PLoS Medicine　Editors (2008) Making Sense of Non-Financial Competing Interests. PLoS Med 5(9): e199. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050199.