Hundreds of Harvard Medical School students and faculty members have joined forces to expose ties between industry and researchers that they believe may be tainting the work being done in Harvard’s classrooms, laboratories, and 17 affiliated teaching hospitals and institutes, The New York Times reported this morning.

“Before coming here, I had no idea how much influence companies had on medical education,” said David Tian, a first-year medical student. “And it’s something that’s purposely meant to be under the table, providing information under the guise of education when that information is also presented for marketing purposes.”

A fourth-year student, Matt Zerden, said he felt “violated” when he learned that a professor who was describing the benefits of cholesterol drugs during a first-year pharmacology class was also a paid consultant to 10 drug companies. Five of those made cholesterol drugs.

A 19-member committee appointed to re-examine the school’s conflict-of-interest policies is scheduled to meet on Thursday. David Korn, a former Stanford University medical dean who last year helped the Association of American Medical Colleges draft a conflict-of-interest policy for medical schools, will advise the group.

School officials point out that corporate support is vital to faculty research at a time when the value of Harvard’s endowment has shrunk 22 percent since last July and charitable giving is down. Concerns about undisclosed industry ties have prompted federal agencies and Congress to call for a crackdown.

The National Institutes of Health, which has been criticized for failing to adequately police such conflicts, has recently frozen some payments to universities whose researchers have questionable ties. —Katherine Mangan