Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the top Republican on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, is ratcheting up the scrutiny of financial ties between drug companies and faculty members at Harvard Medical School. The Iowa senator is asking the drug maker Pfizer to provide details of its payments to at least 149 faculty members at Harvard Medical School, The New York Times reported on its Web site tonight.

The senator’s request followed an article in today’s print edition of the Times about students and faculty members at the medical school who are working to expose potential conflicts that they believe may be tainting teaching and research at the school and its affiliated hospitals and laboratories. Harvard has taken steps in recent months to re-examine the school’s conflict-of-interest policies. A committee appointed to study the issue is scheduled to meet on Thursday.

The Times quoted Senator Grassley as saying in a letter to the pharmaceutical giant that he was “greatly disturbed” to read in the report that a Pfizer representative had taken cellphone photographs of the medical students last fall at a campus demonstration against industry influence.

The senator’s office has raised similar concerns about researchers at other universities, and has been comparing responses from companies and universities to identify researchers who have received substantial payments that they did not disclose, in violation of institutional and federal policies. —Charles Huckabee

Update, 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 4 — Pfizer issued a statement today regretting its sales representative’s actions, according to the Associated Press, but offered no explanation of why the representative was photographing the students. “This unfortunate incident has overshadowed the importance of collaboration between industry and leading academic medical institutions,” Pfizer said.