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Lorenzo Ferro's avatar

That of the "Conflicts of Interest" isn't "a medical problem" or "a problem". It's THE socio-political problem.

Why people take the decisions they take? Because they think that decision is in their best interest given their view of the world and the available information.

Practically no one decides simply based on the contracts he has signed or the oaths he has made.

Disclosure of (some) interests serves the only purpose of raising awareness on the issue - which is still required given the appaling naivety of many still believing/claiming that they aren't influenced by CoI.

But it won't do anything to solving it.

Solving the problem of the CoI requires a reshaping of all the socio-economical and political dynamics and equilibria; it can't be achieved in single sectors through niche policies: those will probably only serve the goal of hiding existing CoI or even let people certify that they have no CoI.

There is a recent field of research called "Mechanism design" that offers the most promising framework to analyze and possibly deal with the problem of CoI by designing systems with low vulnerability to known CoI.

PS: Why people take the decisions they take? I think it's well up for debate that "money" is the main rationale. IMO it unduly simplifies the problem and leads to wrong solutions.

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