Reviewer

You may laugh at my blog yesterday and think the problem of conflict of interest happens only in the circle of politics.

On that, you are wrong; we have just too much experience in academic medicine. Let me tell you a remarkable story:

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A few years ago, one of my colleagues and I were invited by a particular journal to write a commentary on a published paper - the two of us had done some similar work but the result was quite opposite. Naturally, we tried to explain the difference in result, and pointed out a few methodological problems of the others' paper.

When the journal editor showed our commentary to the original authors (for those who are not familiar with our life, it is a common practice), they protested:

"These two Hong Kong authors did not declare their conflict of interest - their group and ours work on the same area but they hold a different view."

My colleague asked how we should respond. I said, "If we work on the same area and share the same view, there is an even more vigorous conflict - we would like to suppress their paper and publish ours."

"What about if we work on a different area ?" My friend remained puzzled.

"In that case, we are not in the position to - and should not have been invited to - comment on their paper !" I laughed.

PS. I suggested to the editor that we put down a conflict of interest statement at the end of our commentary, stating that the two groups worked on the same area. The editor certainly saw the nuisance of my declaration and waved off the idea.