Hints on New NIH COI Rules

I recently referred to a presentation by the Director of NIMH in which he referred to some new initiatives to deal with Conflict of Interest for NIH grantees.

Insel was asked about the tension between his calls for bench to bedside and bedside to practice translation and the conflict of interest scandals associated with the Grassley investigations. He responded that NIH was trying to get more authority to make rules for NIH grantees. Interesting. Of course with what we know about the most egregious cases the allegation is that the scientists in question were already failing to follow the existing disclosure requirements of their institutions. So what are new rules going to do?

I ran across an initial hint over at the Science Insider blog hosted by Science magazine.