Strong views and heartfelt responses on LinkedIn to Simon’s question on whether vendors should continue funding analyst travel to events. Thank you for all of them.

The economic argument was made loudly and honestly. For many independent analysts, vendor-funded travel and accommodation is not a perk. It is what makes attendance economically viable. That point landed, and it is a fair one.

But something else in the thread caught my attention. Something that wasn’t said.

Across tens of comments, not one person argued against the principle of disclosing that their attendance at a vendor event was funded by that vendor. One prominent independent analyst actively welcomed it. Transparency, he said, matters.

That silence speaks volumes.

Let me point to another industry where vendors routinely funded travel and accommodation for influential professionals to attend their events, visit their facilities and deepen relationships with the people funding them. An industry where the value of those relationships was genuine, widely acknowledged … and almost entirely undisclosed.

That industry was pharmaceuticals. That group of influential professionals? Physicians.

For decades, no one in pharma built a serious transparency framework because no one wanted to be the one to ask the question. Then, in 2013, the US government stepped in. The Physician Payments Sunshine Act mandated public disclosure of all payments made to physicians, including travel and hospitality. Every dollar. Publicly searchable and permanently on the record.

The industry didn’t design that framework. A framework was imposed on it.

I want to be unambiguous.

I am *not* suggesting that vendor-funded analyst travel is underhanded or unethical, or that analysts are for sale. The responses this week demonstrated clearly that most are thoughtful, principled professionals who take their independence seriously.

What I am observing is that any ecosystem where significant money flows toward influential voices will eventually have that conversation forced upon it, unless a clear, shared and visible accountability framework is in place.

One thing that will not complicate this: NDAs. An analyst may be under NDA for everything they hear at an event. That doesn’t affect their ability to disclose that the vendor paid for their travel and accommodation. The NDA does not cover the financial relationship.

The strongest defense of vendor-funded analyst travel is a clear transparency framework. Not resistance to having one.

The pharma industry had the same conversation available to it. It chose not to have it. And in 2013, the US Government had it for them.

Given that nobody in this week’s thread objected to the principle of disclosure, what is stopping us in the industry from building that framework itself, on our own terms, before someone builds it for us?

We’d genuinely like to know.