| How Much Did AT&T Pay the New FCC Chief Economist? |
| Written by Dave Burstein |
| Thursday, 30 June 2011 20:20 |
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Googling new FCC Chief Economist Marius Schwartz, I immediately discovered he had been paid by AT&T for papers he wrote about NN. Everyone knows about the confluence of money and influence in DC, where most people think AT&T's lobbyist Jim Cicconi owns the FCC. (He doesn't. In my dozen years on this beat I haven't seen anything that smelled like people being paid off at the FCC, unlike Congress.)
I sent a note asking "In the last three years, approximately how much have you been paid by which parties with financial interests in policy results?" I figured people around the FCC would make a point of disclosure these days. All the papers condemned Commissioner Meredith Baker for taking a multi-million dollar job with Comcast a few months after voting for the Comcast-NBCU merger.
The response: "I was told by the relevant people at the FCC that the appropriate course for me is to file the disclosure forms with the agency." He has no obligation to answer my question. Maybe one of the D.C. reporters can find the answer. Several reported he took the job from the press release without noticing a problem. The Chairman could request Schwartz reveal how much he's been paid.
I believe Schwartz's papers are his honest opinion. They are typical academic stuff, applying theory without knowing enough of the relevant facts to get things right. The problem is not that he sells his opinion, but "publication bias" corresponding to the money flow. With so much money supporting a point of view, most of what's said at D.C. events and published is what the companies prefer. The constant repetition leaves many believing there's a consensus. Only a small fraction of the couple of hundred million spent each year by the Bells on lobbying goes in direct payments. Good lobbyists investing heavily in "independents" who create a "climate of opinion." In a town that rarely understands an idea that doesn't fit on a bumper sticker (Pepper), all the paid for noise has influence.
Every medical journal requires strong disclosures after convincing evidence of corrosive bias. I believe policy people should hold to a similar standard. Here's the disclosure rules of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Conflicts of Interest and Financial Disclosures. A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence (or bias) the author’s decisions, work, or manuscript. All authors are required to disclose all potential conflicts of interest, including specific financial interests and relationships and affiliations (other than those affiliations listed in the title page of the manuscript) relevant to the subject of their manuscript. Authors should err on the side of full disclosure and should contact the editorial office if they have questions or concerns.
All such disclosures must be listed in the Acknowledgment section at the end of the manuscript. Authors without conflicts of interest, including specific financial interests and relationships and affiliations relevant to the subject of their manuscript, should include a statement of no such interests in the Acknowledgment section of the manuscript. Failure to include this information in the manuscript may delay evaluation and review of the manuscript. Authors are expected to provide detailed information about all relevant financial interests and relationships or financial conflicts within the past 5 years and for the foreseeable future (including, but not limited to employment/affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, honoraria, speakers’ bureaus, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, royalties, donation of medical equipment, or patents filed, received, pending, or in preparation), particularly those present at the time the research was conducted and through publication, as well as other financial interests (such as patent applications in preparation), that represent potential future financial gain. Although many universities and other institutions have established policies and thresholds for reporting financial interests and other conflicts of interest, JAMAcomplete disclosure of all relevant financial relationships and potential financial conflicts of interest, regardless of amount or value. For example, authors of a manuscript about hypertension should report all financial relationships they have with all manufacturers of products used in the management of hypertension, not only those relationships with companies whose specific products are mentioned in the manuscript. If authors are uncertain about what constitutes a relevant financial interest or relationship, they should contact the editorial office. For all accepted manuscripts, each author’s disclosures of conflicts of interest and relevant financial interests and affiliations and declarations of no such interests will be published. Decisions about whether such information provided by authors should be published, and thereby disclosed to readers, are usually straightforward. Although editors are willing to discuss disclosure of specific conflicts of interest with authors, JAMA’s policy is one of complete disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest, including specific financial interests and relationships and affiliations (other than those affiliations listed in the title page of the manuscript) relevant to the subject of their manuscript. The policy requesting disclosure of conflicts of interest applies for all manuscript submissions, including letters to the editor and book reviews. If an author’s disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is determined to be inaccurate or incomplete after publication, a correction will be published to rectify the original published disclosure statement, and additional action may be taken as necessary. Authors also are required to report detailed information regarding all financial and material support for the research and work, including but not limited to grant support, funding sources, and provision of equipment and supplies, in the Acknowledgment section of the manuscript. All authors must also complete and sign a statement on Financial Disclosure and Funding/Support that is part of the Authorship Form.6,7 Funding/Support and Role of Sponsor. All financial and material support for the research and the work should be clearly and completely identified in an Acknowledgment section of the manuscript. The specific role of the funding organization or sponsor in each of the following should be specified: “design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; and preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.”6,7 Data Access and Responsibility. For all reports (regardless of funding source) containing original data, at least 1 named author (eg, the principal investigator) who is independent of any commercial funder or sponsor must indicate that she or he “had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.”6 This exact statement should be included in the Acknowledgment section at the end of the manuscript. Modified statements or generic statements indicating that all authors had such access are not acceptable. For industry-sponsored studies, an analysis of the data (based on the entire raw data set and evaluation of the study protocol, and prespecified plan for data analysis) must be conducted by an independent statistician at an academic institution, rather than by statisticians employed by the sponsor or by a commercial contract research organization. The independent biostatistician must be a faculty member at a medical school or academic medical center, or an employee of a government research institute, that has oversight over the person conducting the analysis and that is independent of the commercial sponsor. Details of this independent statistical analysis, the name and institutional affiliation of the independent statistician, and whether compensation or funding was received for conducting the analyses should be reported in the Acknowledgment section of the manuscript.7 The results of this independent statistical analysis should be the results reported in the manuscript. --------------------- Maybe none of this matters. The people at the top of the FCC rarely follow the advice of their own economists. |