Nearly 60% of the experts who reviewed manuscripts for four prominent medical journals received at least one payment from industry during a recent three-year period and, overall, these reviewers or their institutions received more than $1 billion from companies, according to a new analysis.
Between 2020 and 2022, 1,155 of the 1,962 experts who reviewed studies for The BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet, and The New England Journal of Medicine received some form of payment. More than half — or 1,060 reviewers — accepted general payments, such as travel, speaking, consulting and food, among other things; 623 of the experts, or 32%, received payments for research.
Of the $1.06 billion in payments, $1 billion in research payments were made, which included payments to individual physicians and institutional payments for work where the experts served as principal investigators in clinical studies. Another $64.2 million was made in the form of general payments, and consulting fees accounted for $34.3 million of that amount, according to the analysis published in JAMA.
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