The following story — Conflict of interest policy shifts responsibility to U. — caught my attention. With a change of policy by the NIH, faculty at US universities are now required to declare to their institution, financial interests of more than $5000, so any COI can be managed. What is interesting, though, is not the financial threshold (which as I’ve noted in the past, is problematic), but the ongoing problem of identifying when there is a COI, and who should be responsible for such determinations.
As noted in the article,
“People do have conflicts of interest, and it’s not the end of the world,” said Janet Blume, associate dean of the faculty. All Brown professors are required to file a conflict of interest form with the University every year, now listing potential conflicts of interest amounting to $5,000 or more.
All well and good, but what financial sources fit into this requirement? Is it just direct contracts from industry, or can other funders create financial COI that should be declared, and then managed? If so, how are professors, acting in good faith, to know? What is their responsibility to do “due diligence” and investigate all sources of potential funding?
Professor of Economics Ross Levine offered an example of the complexities of conflict of interest in research funding. Levine received a $30,000 grant from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation for research he is conducting on changes in competitive banking policies in 2009. The Koch brothers, founders of a group of charities that have given hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative organizations and causes, contacted Levine around 2006 after visiting campus, Levine said. They expressed interest in his research, which seeks to understand implications of increased competition among banks in the 1970s and 80s in terms of economic growth, distribution of income and racial discrimination, he said.
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None of the money from the Koch brothers is personally benefiting Levine, he said. The money has been allocated to hiring research assistants through an account Brown set up for Levine’s research. Levine has also used funding from several other sources to hire graduate and undergraduate students to assist on the same research, he said.
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Levine said he is “uncomfortable” with the fact he did not know about the Koch brothers’ politics before accepting their grant. “I wish this wasn’t the case,” he said. He said he acknowledges the Koch brothers as a funding source on all papers related to the research, because “it’s the reality.” At the same time, he said he recognizes the complexity of questions surrounding the ethics of accepting funds from outside sources. “I can’t be responsible for screening all of the money that comes to Brown that somehow affects my research, because it comes from such a huge number of sources,” he said.
