Mr. Morey also said that a “patchwork” of disclosure requirements by different publications has complicated matters. “In many cases, researchers are now disclosing above and beyond what is asked for and required, even when their disclosures have no connection to the research they conducted,” he said, adding that Memorial Sloan Kettering has created a task force to establish its own standards. “This is a massive, industrywide problem.”
In a statement, Dr. Thompson said his correction arose from the broader review. “I was no different,” he said. Of the more than 70 articles he published since arriving at the hospital in 2010, he said, “I identified one study in my review, of which I was a secondary author, that I thought should be updated.”
Some of the omissions were extensive. In an updated disclosure, Dr. Wolchok, director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the hospital, outlined his ties to many companies, including receiving consulting fees, owning stock options or being a co-founder. The list of companies that pay him range from major manufacturers like Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck, for whom he works as a paid for consultant, to start-ups like BeiGene, Apricity and Adaptive Biotech, in which he reports owning stock options.
He corrected two articles in the journal Cancer Cell and a third in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Dr. Wolchok is a widely regarded expert in immunotherapy, having treated some of the first patients with a drug based on the work of Dr. James P. Allison, who along with Tasuku Honjo won this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Other Memorial Sloan Kettering researchers on Dr. Wolchok’s papers also updated their interactions with industry, including Dr. Matthew D. Hellmann, Dr. Taha Merghoub and Dr. Michael A. Postow.
“Although the below additional disclosures are not directly relevant to the published work, the authors put them forward in the spirit of full transparency,” one correction said. “The authors apologize for any inconvenience.”
