Fair game? Producing and publishing gambling research

This brief article reviews the findings of Fair Game (2014) and discusses their implications for journals publishing gambling research. Drawing parallels with critiques in tobacco and alcohol, it adds to the growing number of voices arguing for reform of the gambling field.


Introduction
Earliert his year, at eamo fa nthropologists from Goldsmiths, University of London, launched Fair Game ,areport which uses interviews with stakeholderstoinvestigate how gambling research is produced and used (Cassidy, Loussouarn, &Pisac, 2014). We spoke with members of the industry, treatment providers, regulators and policymakers, as well as with researchers. The majority of the 109 stakeholders(67) werebased in the UK, butwe also interviewed people in south-east Europe,North America and Oceania. Thepurposeof Fair Game is to provide as mall and suggestive body of evidence which will encourage others to continue to reflect on their own activities and to expose gambling researcht o criticalattention. If gambling studies is to attract and retaintalented early career scholars, make contributions to policy, and be taken seriously, it has to becomeam orer eflexive, criticaland open field. In this short article Iprovide abrief overview of the findingsof Fair Game before movingo nto ac ritical discussion of the implications of the report for gambling journals.

Methodology
Beforewebegan interviewing for Fair Game we held afocus group of four researchusers (a treatment provider,apolicymakerand two members of the industry) and four research producers (an anthropologist, ah istorian and two psychologists). Members of this group devised 40 questions to ask during semi-structuredi nterviews. They also provided the names of possible contributors. We began by inviting influencers: researchers who sat on boards, advised committeesand produced authoritative, widely cited work; policymakers at the levelo fn ational governments; treatment providersw orking for internationally respected institutions; industryexecutives at board level. We then looked at early career researchers, those working in less mature jurisdictions including Hong Kong,Macauand south-east Europe,and thosewho hadleft the field of gambling research.
Of the 143 people we invited to participate, 109 agreed: 35 members of the gambling industries, 49 researchers,1 1t reatment providers, 6r egulators and 8p olicymakers. The q 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor &F rancis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons. org/Licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, providedthe original workis properly cited. breakdownbygender, years of experience and jurisdiction can be viewed in Fair Game. Interviewsranged from an hour to many hours over several meetings. All interviews were transcribed and entered into Nvivo,s oftware designed to identify common themes in qualitative data. We chose to structure the reporta roundfi ve themes:p roblemsw ith gambling, evidence,the field of gambling studies, moneyand access. We selected quotes from the interviews to illustrate the views that we had collected, giving greater weight to those which were mostrepresentative of our participants, but also preserving diversity. So, for example, even though 40 researchers told us that taking funding directly from the industryc ouldb ee xpected to influence the outcome of research, we also includedt he views of those who believed that doing so had no impact on research. More subtle differencesw ere also preserved where possible. Fore xample, one researcher felt that industryf unding would affect the outcome of most research but not his own. The interviews were replete with strategics eguesa nd pragmatice lisions. As might be expected, the theory and practice of gambling researchare not identical. On the basisof our findings we madeanumber of observations and recommendations, manyo fw hich have been made before by av arietyo fp eople ( Adams, 2013;Cosgrave, 2010;Young, 2012). The particularc ontribution of Fair Game is that it is based on the views of stakeholders and includest heir perspectives on the everyday practices of producing gambling research. Our recommendations includedthe following: . gambling research should broaden its perspective beyond the narrow confines of problem gambling conceptualized as an individual weakness; . policymakers should consultaw ider range of evidence and pay more attention to the derivationofa ll evidence; . gambling studies shouldhave ac ode of ethics; . journals shouldi ncludeaw ider range of approachesa nd consult aw ider range of referees; . research should be funded by hypothecated taxes, the proceeds of which shouldbe distributed by research councils; and . access to data and environments shouldbep art of licensing.
The field of gambling studies An area of consensus betweens takeholder groups was that the standard of research in gambling studies was poor, relative to other fields includingtobacco and alcohol research. According to our participants,g ambling studies is an insular and uncritical homogenous field which suffers from unproductive repetition and rivalries. These weaknesses are reproducedb yf unding which rewards conformity and marginalizes criticalv oices. The impact of this relationship, betweenw hat some of our participants referred to as 'safe' researchand funding, is felt mostacutelyb yearly career researchers: Plenty of times Ihave been pushed to take up more of aconventional perspective on problem gambling, or measuring or using existing work to rehash ideas that are already out there. There is support in that there is money, even. There is career progression. This is the amazing thing for anew scholar in your field. And discouraging too. It is very hard to do something new. You are discouraged, because to work with people you have to choose someone who has arecord of getting money. But if you do that the likelihood is that they are aperson who sticks just to problem gambling. They may be completely genuine and their research may be excellent, in those terms, but those terms are not the ones on which Iwant to work. Iwant to go beyond that and there is absolutely no chance to do that in gambling studies. (Male researcher who has been working on gambling in Europe, but not the UK, for six years.)

R. Cassidy
Several related trends strengthen and tightent his cycle. Some are not exclusive to gambling studies including the reduced availability of public funding for research and the marketization of academia, which has increased pressure on academics to engage in lucrative collaborationsw itht he private sector (Thomas, 2012). Others are more distinctive, including investment by the industry in research, treatment and education as an aspect of brand management/lobbying and the oligarchical structure of the field. Financial supportand therefore influence is concentrated in the hands of afew individuals who are trusted by the industry, regulators and governments to produce research that is acceptable to all parties. Industry supportfor large projects by high-profile academics,including the editor-in-chief of this journal, have attracted negativem edia attention and raised unresolved questions about relationships between researchers and operators (Nicholls, 2014). Agrowing body of researchoutside gambling studies has shownthat, for reasons that are poorly understood,financial relationships with industry increasethe likelihood of proindustryfi ndings, biased interpretations of data and under-representation of alternative interpretations (Babor &M iller, 2014). To take one striking example, Barnes and Bero (1998) found that review papers fundedbythe tobacco industry were 88 timesmore likely than non-industry-funded studies to conclude that passive smoking is noth armful to health. Systematic biases have also been recorded in industry-funded research into sugarsweetened beverages (Bes-Rastrollo, Schulze, Ruiz-Canela, Martinez-Gonzalez, & Stuckler,2 013),c limate change (Shrader-Frechette, 2011)a nd pharmaceuticals (Bekelman, Li, &G ross, 2003).
Them echanisms through which theseb iases are transmitted vary and may be subtle and complex. However, in gambling, some are straightforward. Anumber of our research participants described asense of indebtedness to industryfunders, whose contributions to researchare conceptualised as 'gifts': The research we do has to be of some use to the industry, after all they are paying for it. You can't just choose something completely esoteric -y ou have to demonstrate that what you produce is going to be of some benefit to them otherwise you won't get funding. They are paying for it after all. Ithink that's reasonable! (Female researcher based in the UK who has been working on gambling for four years.) It is not easy to change any field, to ensure that it continues to adapt and develop. However, the torpor in gambling studies is not accidental. Nor does it provoket he anxiety that it should.

Implications for journals
Emphasis on safe research Specialized gambling journals play acentral role in sustaining the field in its current form. The small number of journalsisdominated by individuals acting as contributors, editors, board members and peer reviewers. According to our participants thisperpetuates afocus on 'safe' research, mostly (but not always) conducted by awide range of psychologistsand medicalr esearchers, including psychiatrists, nurses, psychotherapistsa nd biomedical researchers, and focusing on the individual consumption of gambling by people who are identified using screens and questionnaires as 'problem gamblers'. Relatively little attention is paid to the conditions of production which enableg ambling (thep olitical economy of gambling), the history of relationships between operators and the state, the wider public health implications of gambling expansion, or the archaeology and technology of gambling products and places. In this case, the effect of peer review -o ften International Gambling Studies portrayed as an assuranceo fq uality -i st os tifle innovation (Adams, 2008;Horrobin, 1990, Young, 2013. Thep roblem is not (just) the under-representation of qualitative research. Both quantitative and qualitative workcan be 'safe', or critical(in the sense of beinganalytical, searching and significant), rigorous or unsound.Moreover,the majority of disciplines and sub-fields have moved beyond this artificial opposition to embrace mixed methods which are collaborative,i terative and responsive to the questions at hand and the nature of the data available. With af ew exceptions, gambling studies is woefully inadequate in these terms. Funding streamsa nd calls for proposalsh elp to maintaint he artificial separation betweenthese approaches. Researchers are able to construct silos from which they defend their approachesand disparage alternatives. Tables of contentsshow that that publishing is ac onservative game: rearrangementand repetition produces an impression of activitya t the same time as it undermines any serious attemptstoe ncourage diversity or change.

Follow the money
Journals in the fields of tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals researchi nsist that vested interestsa re identified (Casswell, 2013). Indeed, the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal )'will not consider for publication any study that is partly or wholly funded by the tobacco industry' (Godlee et al., 2013). In gambling studies it is virtuallyi mpossible to detect corporate interests, even in research publishedinpeer reviewed journals. Baborand Miller (2014) conducted asurveyof30randomly selected papers from the National Centre for Responsible Gaming's (NCRG) library. Only one declared the NCRG in its conflict of interest statement. Less than half (48%)r eferred to funding from the NCRG in the acknowledgementssectionorafootnote (Babor &Miller, 2014, p. 341). Unlikethe fields of tobacco, alcohol and pharma, there is no tradition of declaring interestsi ng ambling studies.J ournals including Addiction have movedt owards increasinglys tringent requirements, prompting animated discussions (Babor &M iller, 2014;Conibear, 2014;Ellison, 2014). Despite pointed and strenuousi nterventions,s ometimes in the very journalsthat are beingcriticized,gambling studies has resisted reform. Journal policies are inconsistent and applied in an ad hoc manner which does little to assist the reader in contextualizing the research. At conferences, researchers are forced to share rumours (accurate or not) about funding sources. As otherfi elds have learned, as tatemento f interests, whethernegativeorpositive, shouldbeabasic requirement of everypublication and presentation. Declarations of interest can take many forms, but the most effective are simple, includingthis examplefrom Addiction: The authors have no sources of funding, direct or indirect, nor any other connection with the tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceutical or gaming industries nor any body substantially funded by one of these organizations. (McCambridge, Hawkins, &H olden, 2014) Declarations of interest are imperfect tools. Epistemologically, they do not enableu st o metaphorically 'strip' research down to objective findings having eliminated the impact of vested interest. It is difficult to draw the limits of what information mighthelp to interpret aparticular piece of research. They are difficulttoenforce, and to limit. What constitutes a conflict of interest in this field? Where do the edges of declarable interests lie? However, these challenges should not be used as an argumentfor inactivity (Gmel, 2010). There are many definitions of conflicts of interest which could be helpful to gambling studies. The Committee on PublicationEthics (COPE),for example, states in its Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (2003) Gestures to situateknowledge do not resolve bias or facilitateasingle 'correct' reading of findings, but they do inform the reader or listener and contribute to am ore open and criticalfi eld. They are one of ar aft of related measures that is requiredt oi mprove the quality and credibilityo fpublishedr esearch in this field.

Reproducibility
Concerns about the reproducibility of research have spread recently from medicalscience to the life sciences (Anonymous, 2013) including popular science (McNutt, 2014). Ledgerwood has recently described a' crisis of confidence' and a' sea-change' in psychological science,following an umber of largely unrelated events that happened to coincide -J onah Lehrer's (2010) widely read New Yorker article on the effects of publication bias in science, Bem's (2011) controversial paper on precognition, arising concern about direct replication, the Stapel fraud case (Tilburg University, 2011), and the publication of several troubling critiques of current practices in research and publishing (e.g., Simmons, Nelson, &Simonsohn, 2011;Vul, Harris, Winkielman, &P ashler, 2009). (Ledgerwood, 2014) Gamblingh as ap articularly wide credibilityg ap, with much workf unded directly or indirectly by the industry, small pools of reviewers, the absence of atradition of disclosure of sources of funding or data andanaivea pproacht oc onflicts of interest. Ar eproducibility policy which requiresa uthors to discloset he data and computer code used for analysis would place gambling studies journals at the cutting edge of debates in academic publishing. 1

International Gambling Studies:abrief case study
International Gambling Studies ( IGS)i samembero fC OPE,b ut the disclosure policy provided online under 'Instructions for Authors' makes no reference to this membership and in fact states: The Editor(s) accept that such support is often essential to enable research to occur; they will seek further clarification where appropriate. (IGS, 2014) It is not clear exactly what'such support' refers to -p resumably from industry? It is not only accepted, but also described as 'often' (not 'sometimes', or 'regularly') 'essential'. One might think that thisw ouldn ecessitate ap articularlyc lear and robust policy on disclosure. On the contrary, IGS policy is discretionary and places no particular responsibilities on the author. It continues: For more information about the declaration of potential conflicts see the guidelines complied (sic) by the International Society of Addiction Journal Editors http://www.parint.org/ isajewebsite/conflict2.htm (IGS, 2014) 2 The International Society of AddictionJ ournals Editors (ISAJE) webpage referred to provides acomprehensive 'transparency form' for completion by contributors and editors to journals, which has recently been adopted by Addiction.Itrequests information for the previous three yearson (1)  Importantly, it also suggests that those who do not see themselves as having aconflict of interest mustdeclare as such.
Theelectronicsubmission of articlesto IGS requires authors to answer the following questions: Do you have any conflict of interest including any financial/professional associations or interests which should be disclosed? If yes, please state.
Have you received any funding for this manuscript? If yes, please state the source of funding.
Authorsare also required to tick abox which confirms that 'I have uploaded atitle page with ac lear statment [sic] acknowledging any funding, support, and conflicts of interest where relevantinthe title page alongwith the brief biographies of each author.' Articles in the current edition of IGS continue to maken or eference to declarations of interest, negativeo rp ositive (see, for example, Gainsbury, Hing, Delfabbro,&King, 2014or Philander&MacKay,2014. The purposeofinvoking but not enforcing guidelines from ISAJE or purchasing membership of COPEi st herefore opaque.T his problem is not confined to IGS.

Conclusions
In tobacco research over the past 40 years, revelations about financial relationships between industryand researchers have discredited evidence, arguments and institutions as well as individuals (Petticrew &Lee, 2011). Those of us who are fed up with the current situation are beginningtoask similar questions about gambling studies.Who is paying for what? The spotlight will fall on research funding, consultancy, sponsorship and charitable donations to educational programmes and institutions. In Fair Game we referred to the now defunct Centre for the Study of Gamblingatthe University of Salford in the United Kingdom which received£100,000 ayear from casino corporations including MGM Mirage,Isle of Capri and KerznerI nternational.T hen head Peter Collins declaredt hese relationships on the website and whenasked about them by ajournalist suggested that operators chose to support his centre because they shared the views that he held,independently (Barnett, 2007). How many currently active institutionsw ho present themselves as independent sources of evidence for policymakers declare financial relationshipswith operators?
Individuals,c onference organizers, editorsa nd directors of research institutes who choose not to declare financial relationships with industry are playing adangerous game. In the past, somemight have thought it acceptable that financial supportfrom charities set up to raise and distributefunding from the industryneed not be declared. This is no longer as ustainable position. The body of evidence about the impact on research of industry funding is growing. It is becoming increasingly clear that all researchers mustbeexplicit about their own position and allow readers and listeners to makej udgements about how their work should be understood. Gamblings tudies has an umber of otherp rofound structuralissues to address, including improving the mechanismsfor funding research, but until journal authors and editors devise asystematic approach to disclosures of interest it will always be as econd-rate field with unresolved methodological, ethicala nd epistemological issues which reflect poorlyone veryone of itspractitioners.

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R. Cassidy Constraints on publishing: Near the end of the project, Iw as asked by the RiGT to submit press releases for prior approval, ar equest that Id eclined. The ERC has not placed any restrictions on publishing other than that they be acknowledged as as ource of support.

Declaration of interests
Competing interests: Between 2007 and 2009 Ireceived ad hoc support from the National Lottery Commission for the Gambling Research Network, ag roup of early career and PhD researchers coming together in London two or three times ayear. Money covered refreshments and no explicit restrictions or inducements were placed on the group by the NLC. Ih ave paid to attend industrysponsored events and attended free, industry-supported events. Ihave not received any other direct or indirect payments from the industry or any other groups substantially funded by gambling to conduct research or to speak at conferences or events. Ihave no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Notes
1. The Transparency Project (http://www.thetransparencyproject.org/) is an example of an attempt by ag roup of researchers (lead by Howard Shaffer and Debi LaPlante of the Division on Addictions at the Cambridge Health Alliance, ateaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School) to share data contributed by an industry sponsor (bwin.party digital entertainment) with aw ider audience. The fact that this attempt has not been universally well received is further evidence of the credibility gap in gambling research. 2. The online 'General Guidelines' for authors submitting to IGS also indicate that 'Authors must also incorporate aD isclosure Statement which will acknowledge any financial interest or benefit they have arising from the direct applications of their research. Disclosure statements should be included on the title page and also stated and described during the submission process. Full disclosure of any conflicts of interest is required at the time of submission.' 'Disclosure statement' is hotlinked to 'Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest' a subsection of Taylor and Francis' author services (see http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/ copyright/assignmentAndYourRights.asp#link3).