There are five years after a scandal erupted on employees who consulted for drug companies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) banned most of these relationships by scientists internally. A new study mixed effects. The rules do not appear to have hampered scientific productivity, the survey found. But a whopping 80% of NIH scientists find overly restrictive rules, and many say they have hampered the ability of the agency to recruit new faculty members.
NIH banned most industry consultants by his staff after a newspaper investigation found that some senior researchers earned large sums of money from companies. scientists warned that the strict rules intramural lead staff on. Darren Zinner of Brandeis University, Eric Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital, and his colleagues published the first study peer reviewed the impact of the rules. It is based on a survey of October 08 to January 09 sent to 00 senior managers and investigators; 70% responded.
Unsurprisingly, industrial relations are now less only about 33% reported an industry relationship, down about half before the rules of 05. This has not affected production the average researcher documents and patent applications, the survey found. And almost half of respondents say that the new rules have improved the public image of the NIH. But 80% say that the rules are too strict, 77% think it is now more difficult to accomplish the mission of NIH, and 66% are less satisfied with their jobs.
More than half of the researchers and 78% of directors said that the rules have made it more difficult to recruit new faculty members. Although the NIH has perhaps gained public credibility, the rules "also made it more difficult for the organization to fulfill its mission," the authors of the study conclude in the November issue of Academic Medicine .
NIH officials put a positive slant on the study in an accompanying comment. Interactions with industry "continued relatively unaffected," wrote Michael Gottesman, NIH Deputy Director for intramural research, and NIH ethics officer Holli Beckerman Jaffe. They highlight trends in the new cooperation agreements between researchers and NIH companies (called CRADA), which, after falling in 06, reached record levels of more than 30 per year. Yet the rules, they admit, "challenged the NIH's ability to attract and retain some of the most qualified scientists."
NIH is now preparing to tighten the rules for extramural scientists as well, looking outpatient, in particular, although mainly by asking researchers to more information at the NIH and institutions. The planned changes would not limit what the grant beneficiaries may be as long as potential conflicts of interest are examined and managed. Interestingly, despite their dissatisfaction with much stricter rules at NIH, two thirds of NIH researchers interviewed intramural think that the same rules should be applied to their peers in NIH-funded academic institutions.
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