The Competing Interests statement for this article [1] states that one of the authors received grant funding from the Smoking Research Foundation, which according to [2] has received financial support from the tobacco industry. It is unclear whether Smoking Research Foundation grant funding contributed to the author’s salary or research costs during the period when the study reported in [1] was conducted. The foundation is not listed as a primary funder for this study in the article’s Funding Statement.
In light of this issue the PLOS ONE article [1] may not comply with the journal’s policy on Funding from Tobacco Companies [3] which was implemented in 2010.
Therefore, the PLOS ONE Editors issue this Expression of Concern.
We regret that this concern was not identified and addressed prior to the article’s [1] publication.
References
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- 2. Iida K, Proctor RN. (2018) ‘The industry must be inconspicuous’: Japan Tobacco’s corruption of science and health policy via the Smoking Research Foundation. Tobacco Control 27:e3–e11. pmid:29437992
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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/disclosure-of-funding-sources#loc-funding-from-tobacco-companies
Citation: The PLOS ONE Editors (2023) Expression of Concern: Middle-term prognosis in patients with ulcerative colitis who achieved clinical and endoscopic remission by budesonide rectal foam. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0280122. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280122
Published: January 11, 2023
Copyright: © 2023 The PLOS ONE Editors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.