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A Letter to JACN Readers from the Editor-In-Chief

Editor-In-Chief
Professor of Nutrition
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts

Integrity in Science Watch, a weekly alert from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) called to my attention, in late September, a breakdown in our editorial process regarding articles appearing in Supplements to the Journal (http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/jacn_letter_and_email.pdf).

The Journal’s expectation of appropriate disclosures of conflicts of interest (COI) by authors is the issue at hand. We had such an expectation but it was not followed. The alert is appreciated and has resulted in action to prevent future COI uncertainties regarding JACN Supplements.

The Journal’s practice had been to delegate to a Supplement guest editor the full responsibility to ensure "authors compliance with the formal standards of the Journal" without requiring documentation by the guest editor that authors’ COIs are disclosed. Our Editorial Board voted, at the annual ACN meeting in October, to change this practice, effective immediately. All authors must now submit COI disclosure information for review by the JACN editorial staff prior to the publication of any article in JACN. Thus, authors of Supplement articles will now file COI information with the Journal as has been the procedure for authors of regular Journal articles.

The appropriate COI information has now been collected from the authors of the June, 2006 JACN Supplement and is summarized on page 550 in this issue. This information will be electronically linked to each article on our website as well. I have asked ILSI to do their best to distribute this COI document to everyone who was mailed a copy of the Supplement by ILSI.

CSPI’s statement that a government rule concerning MEDLINE indexing was violated is not correct. There are no financial relationships with the Supplement’s funding source, ILSI, to be reported. Nor is there mention of any product by an author who has financial ties to that product.

The main issue of COI declaration seems, unfortunately, to be confounded by "an elephant in the room"—the polarizing topic of recommendations concerning dietary sodium intake. The Journal did accept ILSI’s request that Alexander Logan serve as the Guest Editor with the knowledge that he is the scientific advisor to their Committee on Sodium. In my view, unpaid scientific advising—by itself—does not create a conflict.

The potential for financial and non-financial COIs permeates science as it is presently supported and rewarded. The Journal now goes forward with an improved system to ensure that COIs are fully disclosed by all its authors. On this all parties agree.

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