Too many studies have hidden conflicts of interest. A new tool makes it easier to see them.

I once got a press release about a “landmark” study showing cranberry juice could cut the risk of urinary tract infections.

This study piqued my interest. All the credible research I’d seen on cranberry juice and UTIs suggested the sweet stuff had little or no effect. So was this new study really a game changer?

When I looked at the paper a little more closely, I found out it wasn’t just funded by Ocean Spray, one of the world’s leading makers of cranberry juice; it was also co-authored by Ocean Spray staff scientists. The company was involved in nearly every step of the scientific process, even helping to write the paper. Upon closer scrutiny, it became clear that the study authors made a bunch of small decisions that helped ensure the “amazing” results that conveniently favored guzzling more of the company’s product.

This example doesn’t come in isolation. Industry is a big funder of research, and companies don’t shell out money for science out of the kindness of their hearts. They do it to ensure their products get a scientific stamp of approval.

There’s another big problem: It can be really hard to figure out if a study has been influenced by industry. Conflict of interest information is often buried deep at the end of an article, just before the list of citations.

Now that’s about to change: PubMed — a powerful taxpayer-funded search engine for medical study abstracts that doctors, patients, and the media rely on — just started displaying conflict of interest data up front. New information about funding sources and potential conflicts will now appear right below study abstracts, which means readers don’t have even to open a journal article to be made aware of any possible industry influence over studies.

Here’s how the new, more transparent abstracts look (the red arrow points to the change):

The change comes a year after 62 scientists and physicians from around the world (including the head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest) lobbied for the update, part of a broader transparency movement in science. In a March 2016 letter, the experts wrote:

We strongly urge ... all journals listed in PubMed to provide information about funding sources and other possible competing interests in all abstracts. To facilitate research, the “competing interest” section should be fully searchable. Thus, PubMed would advise users about the entity or entities that funded the study and whether (a) the authors reported no competing interests; (b) the authors reported the competing interests; (c) the article did not include a competing-interests disclosure statement; or (d) the journal did not provide disclosure of funding sources or the authors’ other competing interests.

One of the authors of that letter was New York University nutrition researcher Marion Nestle. She’s been tracking industry-funded studies on her blog and found 156 of 168 reported results that favored the funders’ interests. That’s more than 92 percent.

Nutrition isn’t the only area of research with this problem. Researchers have found that studies supported by industry — from pharmaceuticals and medical devices to weight loss aids and sugary drinks — are more likely to return results that are favorable to the funders. With all the discretionary decisions that go into designing, conducting, and interpreting research, it’s not entirely surprising that this happens.

“Adding disclosures about researchers’ financial relationships with drug, food, chemical, and other industries makes PubMed search results even more useful than they already are,” said CSPI president Michael F. Jacobson in a statement.

When studies are funded by industry, it doesn’t necessarily mean they should be discarded. Rather, readers should proceed with caution and consider how the funding source may have biased the study outcomes. As always, single studies should also be read in the broader context of the scientific literature on a given subject, and it’s worth seeking out other research with different funding sources.

According to CSPI, hundreds of millions of searches are conducted on PubMed every year. The easier-to-access disclosures won’t fix the problem of conflict of interest in science. But it’s a step toward making these links more transparent — and that’s a good thing.