Universities Are Pressed to Monitor Their Own Financial Conflicts

American universities, while increasingly guarding against financial conflicts of interest among their faculty and staff members, usually don’t have policies to prevent their own institutional conflicts of interest in scientific research. That’s the finding of a survey by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services covering 250 institutions that receive money from the National Institutes of Health. The inspector general recommended that the NIH impose regulations that would deal with institutional financial conflicts, but said the NIH is so far declining to do so.