Conflicts of Interest Thwart Good Science

Re “Rules Are Killing Good Science,” Commentary, March 14: I love how Henry I. Miller feels that engaging in conduct that earns “hundreds of thousands of dollars” is unlikely to be related to any sort of misconduct. It’s only “outside part-time employment or volunteer work, as is largely the case in academia.” I don’t know what world Mr. Miller lives in, but I’m an academic and I don’t get those kind of offers. Maybe it’s because I’m not naive enough to think they’re without strings.

It seems Miller thinks National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni is a “mediocre” bureaucrat who can’t “stand up to [his] political masters.” Put Zerhouni on the drug industry’s short hit list. Too bad. It looked to me as if he was one of the few Washington bureaucrats who had any starch in his pants.

Leonore Tiefer

Clinical Assoc. Professor

of Psychiatry

NYU School of Medicine

New York

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What this country needs and deserves from all the scientists employed by the government is their best unbiased efforts. That being said, they also have to be paid enough to not daydream about jobs in the private sector. People doing research need the freedom to pursue all the avenues they find, but the people evaluating the results must be above any suspicion of bias or conflict.

I want to feel assured that whatever the government develops, be it alone or in conjunction with partner companies, is the best that science can offer. It is the evaluation that must be unbiased, and those are the people who must be free of conflict. If the rules are adjusted and people don’t cross over in their roles, we should get the right results.

Michael Wolfstone

Monterey Park

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If anyone “killed good science” at the NIH, it was former director Dr. Harold Varmus. In the 10 years leading up to 1995, NIH, the National Science Foundation and the larger science community engaged in vigorous debate over new federal regulations to control conflict of interest in scientific research. These regulations went into effect in 1995.

On his watch, Varmus suspended these rules for NIH scientists. The 1995 federal regulations required that any conflict of interest had to be disclosed by scientists seeking NIH or NSF research support. Others, not involved in the particular conflict of interest, were to decide whether the research should be supported anyway. If the decision was to support the research, a plan had to be in place to manage the conflict of interest to avoid its corrupting influence on good judgment about the research outcomes.

Despite Miller’s claim that there are no allegations of “injured patients or compromised federal research,” we have the notorious case of Rezulin, which exposed the pernicious effects of Varmus’ hands-off approach.

To find a middle ground, those responsible for NIH policy should review the 1995 federal regulations and the published debates that preceded their adoption.

Raymond Fleck

Retired Director

of Research

Cal Poly Pomona