In my experience, I’ve noted that there’s often an assumption by many that COI are about individual misbehaviour. The following story about state of Arizona’s Attorney General’s Office investigating a Tuscon area school board about dubious procurement practices — AG report chastises TUSD on purchases — shows how COI can be a problem of institutional culture.
According to the report (cited in the news story)
“This is not a case of one rogue employee and a dishonest vendor corrupting a single district procurement,” the report said. “Multiple district employees and administrators took part in these activities and others looked the other way while district policies and state and federal laws were ignored.”
A couple of different stories that highlight different aspects of COI.
Research Ethics blog, on the role of professional associations setting standards regarding financial declarations.
A Professional Association With a Spine
A story from Cyprus, about who should be involved decisions about coverage in drug formulaires.
Drugs purchasing body embroiled in conflict of interest charge
From the University of Wisconsin, about updating their COI policies regarding the School of Medicine (similar issues at Harvard and Minnesota)
UW responds to senator’s inquiry into medical conflict of interest policy
And from the pubic sector (the state of Massachusetts), an example of the problem with determining when (and how much?) financial interests are problematic.
What’s $10K among friends?
A professor at Emory has run afoul of the NIH reporting guidelines for declaring financial interest – Embattled Professor Resigns From Chair – which require researchers funded by the NIH to “to disclose financial relationships exceeding $10,000 in payment or a 5 percent ownership”. In this case, the professor (Charles B. Nemeroff) had on the order of $800,000 in undisclosed financing…
P.S. Nov 4, 2009: Controversial Emory researcher leaving
Over at the Research Ethics Blog, they’ve a post about Harvard University revisiting its research ethics policy, explicitly concerning conflicts of interest and clinical drug trials.
Its interesting to see that the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine — which is signatory to the ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals and also has a COI policy addressing financial support of authors — has been critiqued for essentially not following the spirit of its own policy.
