ICMEJ Proposes Data Socialism – Data Utopianism Has its Cracks - Comments Due April 18

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recently put forth a proposed set of new requirements for sharing data that was generated by interventional clinical trials. The ICJME believes there is an ethical obligation to responsibly share such data because the participants in the trials put themselves at risk. Essentially the ICMJE is proposing that as a condition of consideration for publication of a clinical trial report in their member journals, the authors must share with others the deidentified individual patient data (IPD) that is underlying the results presented in the article, including any tables, figures, appendices, and other supplementary material, no later than six months after publication. This proposed requirement will include all data underlying the results of the article's findings, as well as any necessary metadata. As you can imagine, there are strong opinions on both sides of this proposal. Those who are arguing for it, claim, "many funders around the world – foundations, government agencies, and industry – now mandate data sharing." You know, that whole, "everyone else is doing it, we should too," mentality that our parents warned us about when we were younger. Those who are against it have a multitude of opinions and reasons for being against it. Some go so far as to refer to those who support data sharing as "data parasites," since they latch onto research that has already been painstakingly performed and utilize it for the...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs