The study authors examined U.S. physicians who published articles in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery or The American Journal of Sports Medicine. There were 766 authors included in the study, and 64.5 percent received less than $10,000 per year, whereas 21.1 percent received between $10,000 and $100,000 and 14.4 percent received more than $100,000 in industry payments.
Here are three things to know.
1. After stratifying the study authors by position — whether they were assistant, associate or full professors or nonacademic — the authors who received more payments had higher productivity and total publication counts than the lower earning authors.
2. The factors independently predicting high Hirsch indexes were:
• Industry payments of $10,000 to $100,000
• Payments greater than $100,000 from industry
• Associate and full professorship
• Last authorship
3. The study didn’t establish a causal relationship between industry payments and productivity. However, they did identify “increasing industry payments as an independent predictor of research productivity among authors at all academic levels who had published peer-reviewed orthopedic research.”
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