FLICKR, J. ROSENFELD
The Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a non-partisan, non-profit government watchdog group, is concerned that a proposed rule that would require government-funded researchers to publicly disclose potential financial conflicts of interest will not be finalized in its current form.
In May 2009 and again in 2010, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) proposed changes to its conflict of interest guidelines that, among other differences, would require physicians and scientists funded by the agency’s extramural program to disclose financial arrangements with private companies in a public database. The NIH's existing rule simply states that extramural investigators must disclose financial interests to their own institutions, which are permitted to (and often do) keep the information to themselves. "The public trust in what we do is just essential, ...
