The NIH funds a huge fraction vast of biomedical research in the US. Pharma does important work too, but it’s largely concentrated in the very last stages of getting a product to market.
These COI disclosures also strike me as hard to interpret. It’s certainly possible that some of these people are deeply invested in a company and are pushing its particular therapy hard to buy a new boat or something. However, I’d bet many of them are $250 to participate in a focus group, or free conference registration to be in a panel. It’s important to know who’s buttering the authors’ bread, but it’d be helpful to know how much it’s being buttered too.
> The NIH funds a huge fraction vast of biomedical research in the US.
This document https://www.researchamerica.org/sites/default/files/Policy_A... states that in 2017 private industry spent $121 billion on Medical & Health R&D Expenditures in 2017 compared to $39 for the federal govt ($32 of which is NIH). $121 billion in a single year -- I honestly assumed the number was in millions till I re-read it.
You are probably right that the drug companies are (not surprisingly) focused specifically on drugs while NIH research is more general and widespread. But that is still a very large difference.
These COI disclosures also strike me as hard to interpret. It’s certainly possible that some of these people are deeply invested in a company and are pushing its particular therapy hard to buy a new boat or something. However, I’d bet many of them are $250 to participate in a focus group, or free conference registration to be in a panel. It’s important to know who’s buttering the authors’ bread, but it’d be helpful to know how much it’s being buttered too.