GAO Examines Conflicts of Interest in Federally Supported Academic R&D

Unless federal agencies do more to safeguard against financial conflicts of interest in universities, the government may not be able to properly regulate the flow of federally funded research, suggests a new report published by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). Conflicts of interest, as an issue, is of growing significance for the academic community.

Of eight federal agencies surveyed, only the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have policies in place for identifying and managing fiscal conflicts for the research they fund, GAO states. The other six agencies – the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education and Energy; the Environmental Protection Agency; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – are said not to have financial conflict of interest standards for university research grants. These agencies and 200 of the nation's leading research universities were reviewed by GAO via a Web-based survey.

GAO sought to answer two questions in conducting its survey, including whether universities implement the above standards. Of the 171 responding universities, 148 said their federally funded research is overseen by financial conflict of interest policies similar to those of NIH and NSF. Seventeen, however, said they do not recognize either agency's requirements when considering grants from other federal agencies.

The second question examined by GAO, namely whether the results of federally funded research grants are made public, perhaps yielded more positive results. Five of the surveyed agencies post such information on their websites, GAO reports, while all agencies "explicitly encourage funding recipients to make results public." NIH and NSF said they do not post research results on their websites due to several risks involved.

Per GAO's recommendation, the Department of Education has agreed to publish its research results to its website. Also, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) said it would develop a federal requirement for identifying and resolving financial conflicts of interest in federally funded research.

It is important to note the eight agencies surveyed by GAO provided 97 percent of the $19 billion obligated by federal agencies in fiscal year 2001 for university research. NIH and NSF alone are said to have accounted for $14.2 billion in FY 2001. Overall, federal agencies provided 60 percent of all university research funding that year, GAO states.

In its introduction, GAO notes the payoff of federal investment in university research is huge, with thousands of inventions leading to new technologies and, ultimately, new jobs each year. Moreover, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 has enabled greater commercialization of university technology, GAO adds. The particular meaningfulness of its report is probably most evident in this increased importance that university research plays to technological innovation — that as partnerships between universities and businesses have grown, so too have the "concerns that financial conflicts of interest might restrict the dissemination of research results or bias the conduct or results of federally funded research."

The GAO report (GAO-04-31) is available for download at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0431.pdf