The association between money and opinion in academic emergency medicine.
OBJECTIVE
Financial conflicts of interest have come under increasing scrutiny in medicine, but their impact has not been quantified. Our objective was to use the results of a national survey of academic emergency medicine (EM) faculty to determine if an association between money and personal opinion exists.


METHODS
We conducted a web-based survey of EM faculty. Opinion questions were analyzed with regard to whether the respondent had either 1) received research grant money or 2) received money from industry as a speaker, consultant, or advisor. Responses were unweighted, and tests of differences in proportions were made using Chi-squared tests, with p<0.05 set for significance.


RESULTS
We received responses from 430 members; 98 (23%) received research grants from industry, while 145 (34%) reported fee-for-service money. Respondents with research money were more likely to be comfortable accepting gifts (40% vs. 29%) and acting as paid consultants (50% vs. 37%). They had a more favorable attitude with regard to societal interactions with industry and felt that industry-sponsored lectures could be fair and unbiased (52% vs. 29%). Faculty with fee-for-service money mirrored those with research money. They were also more likely to believe that industry-sponsored research produces fair and unbiased results (61% vs. 45%) and less likely to believe that honoraria biased speakers (49% vs. 69%).


CONCLUSIONS
Accepting money for either service or research identified a distinct population defined by their opinions. Faculty engaged in industry-sponsored research benefitted socially (collaborations), academically (publications), and financially from the relationship.
Birkhahn
Robert H
RH
New York Methodist Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Brooklyn, NY.
Blomkalns
Andra
A
Klausner
Howard
H
Nowak
Richard
R
Raja
Ali S
AS
Summers
Richard
R
Weber
Jim E
JE
Briggs
William M
WM
Arkun
Alp
A
Diercks
Deborah
D
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