IMPACT OF UNFUNDED RESEARCH IN MEDICINE, PATHOLOGY, AND SURGERY

The impact of unfunded medical research (ie, research conducted with n o visible means of support) has received scant attention. In this stud y, we counted research contributions from the 10 most-cited journals i n the fields of internal medicine, pathology, and surgery. Ten consecu tive articles, excluding case reports and review articles, for the yea rs 1987, 1989, and 1991 were sampled from each of 10 journals for the three areas of medicine. Unfunded articles accounted for the majority of contributions (60% of pathology articles, 62% of internal medicine articles, and 74% of surgery articles). In 1987, funded research artic les published received somewhat more citations (2,961) than unfunded r esearch articles (2,368). Among articles supported by an NIH grant, th e first author of the article was seldom the grant's principal investi gator (38.6%, 26.9%, and 16.7% of funded articles by pathologists, int ernists, and surgeons, respectively). These results indicate that unfu nded research plays a major role in medical research.