Perhaps more so than most years to date, 2009 has repeatedly raised the specter of misdeeds in research -- both in academia and industry.
New year's celebrations in Taipei
Image: Wikimedia Commons
With more and more academic research linkurl:funded by industry;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55506/ and few universities having consistent policies on how their researchers must report their financial ties, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) this year linkurl:continued his probe;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56127/ into researchers' and physicians' conflicts of interest. In response to the increasing pressure, the National Institutes of Health finally conceded that it may need to do some linkurl:conflict of interest monitoring;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55685/ of its own, rather than relying on voluntary reporting by researchers and their institutions. Meanwhile, top medical journals have adopted linkurl:a standard conflict-of-interest disclosure policy;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56057/ that probes deep into the financial and nonfinancial interests of authors publishing in their pages. It's also been a boom year for lawsuits accusing companies of improprieties like misrepresenting...
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