Disclosure: a modest proposal

Abstract 

In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote an essay with the “modest proposal” that one way to manage overpopulation among the poor would be for the rich to eat them. Although not as serious a problem as that faced by Swift's England, we have a problem with the effective impotence of our current methods used to disclose potential conflicts of interest in publications and presentations. If speakers or writers cannot be relied upon to describe honestly and accurately their conflicts, perhaps we may turn to their peers to do it for them. Although there are reasons this modest proposal may be as impractical as Swift's, at least it does not involve eating our lecturers.