Determining the key actors and contents of the prevailing biomedical research agenda

MERCEDES GARCÍA CARRILLO; FEDERICO TESTONI; MARC-ANDRÉ GAGNON; CECILIA RIKAP; BLAUSTEIN, MATÍAS

Conferencia; 4S Annual Meeting - Society for Social Studies of Science; 2021

Conflicts of interest in biomedical research can influence research results and drive research agendas away from what is most relevant to public health. Previous agenda-setting studies share two shortfalls, they only account for direct connections between institutions and private firms and a potential bias based on researchers? personal beliefs. The goal of this investigation was to determine the key actors and contents of the prevailing health and biomedical sciences (HBMS) research agenda. In order to do so, we performed a bibliometric and lexical analysis of 95,415 scientific articles published between 1999 and 2018 in the highest impact factor journals within HBMS, using the Web of Science database and the CorText platform. HBMS?s prevailing knowledge network of institutions was proxied with network maps where nodes represent affiliations and edges the most frequent co-authorships. The content of the prevailing HBMS research agenda was depicted through co-occurrence network maps of prevalent multi-terms found in titles, keywords, and abstracts. Our results show that large private firms? and leading academic institutions? HBMS research agendas are intertwined. The prevailing HBMS agenda is mostly based on molecular biology, with an inclination towards cancer and cardiovascular research. Studies on pathogens and biological vectors related to recent epidemics are marginal. The content of the prevailing HBMS research agenda prioritizes research on pharmacological intervention over research on socio-environmental factors influencing disease onset or progression and overlooks, among others, the study of infectious diseases. We conclude that a more balanced HBMS research agenda, together with epistemological approaches that consider socio-environmental factors associated with disease spreading, could contribute to being better prepared to prevent and treat more diverse pathologies and to improve overall health outcomes.