DOES science need cleaning up? Some people think so. A panel convened by the US government’s National Institutes of Health is looking into tighter rules on collaborations between NIH scientists and outside companies. The move follows an article in the Los Angeles Times in December which alleged that NIH researchers had been collecting fees and stock options without publicly disclosing the ties to the companies concerned.
More recently in the UK, Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who first proposed a link between autism and the MMR vaccine, has faced charges that he failed to disclose a possible financial conflict of interest…
