NIH Proposes Tougher Conflict of Interest Rules

The National Institutes of Health has proposed new regulations aimed at reducing financial conflicts of interest in scientific research.  The rules will cap the amount an NIH-backed researcher can receive from outside companies without reporting to $5,000 (the previous limit was $10,000).  They also require universities to provide details of plans to reduce financial conflicts of interest.

Speaking with the Chronicle of Higher Education about the new regulations, IMAP President David Rothman says that the new rules do not go far enough.

"The NIH has left a lot of this to the institutions," said Rothman. "One would have hoped it would give them much more explicit guidelines."

Rothman noted that the NIH had success several years ago with new rules on the conduct of experiments involving human beings, in part because universities were made to fear the loss of NIH financing.

In one notable action, the federal government suspended for one week all research financing at the Johns Hopkins University after the 2001 death of a young woman in an asthma study.

The regulation of human-research protections was "terribly vague and not good enough," Mr. Rothman said, "but it provoked good changes."

To read the complete article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, click here.