NIH Conflicts Overhaul Bumps Up Against Psychiatry's Old Boys Network

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http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/nih-conflicts-overhaul-bumps-up-.html

NIH Conflicts Overhaul Bumps Up Against

Psychiatry's Old Boys Network

by Jocelyn Kaiser on June 7, 2010 4:57

PM |

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is again being blasted for

how it's handling an uproar over investigator conflicts of interest

(COI). Basken of The Chronicle of Higher Education reports

that Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health

(NIMH), gave a job recommendation for an old colleague who had been

sanctioned by his university for breaking federal COI rules while Insel

was helping NIH overhaul the rules.

The one seeking a new job was Nemeroff, former chair of the

Emory University department of psychiatry. In 2008, a Senate

investigation found that Nemeroff failed to report at least $1.2

million of more than $2.4 million that he had received for consulting

for drug companies. NIH suspended

one of Nemeroff's grants, and in December 2008, Emory announced

that it would not allow Nemeroff to apply for NIH grants for 2 years.

Nemeroff then applied for a job at the University of Miami's medical

school. According to e-mails

that The Chronicle obtained, the school's dean, Pascal

Goldschimidt, e-mailed Insel in July 2009 to ask for a "confidential

opinion" regarding Nemeroff. Insel replied that he could not provide a

written recommendation but could talk to Goldschmidt informally by

phone, which he apparently did, according to the e-mails. (Goldschimdt

told The Chronicle he wanted to be sure Nemeroff could receive

NIH grants and that Insel assured him "that Charlie was absolutely in

fine standing.") At the time, Insel co-chaired a new NIH committee to

revise federal COI regulations; NIH proposed

changes in those rules last month.

The two psychiatrists go way back: The Chronicle reports

that Nemeroff helped Insel move from NIMH to Emory in the early 1990s

and later lobbied for him to become NIMH director. "It leaves everybody

scratching their heads as to what Insel's posture and NIH's posture

about ethics is," psychiatrist Bernard Carroll of the Pacific

Behavioral Research Foundation in Carmel, California, a long-time critic

of Nemeroff, told The Chronicle.

Still, it's not clear whether Insel violated any rules. NIH

spokesperson Burklow told ScienceInsider by e-mail that

regulations allow Insel to give a written or oral job recommendation

for someone he dealt with during his federal employment. His membership

on the COI committee had no bearing on the Insel recommendation,

Burklow writes.

Perhaps more troubling than Insel's phone call is that the

punishment Emory imposed on Nemeroff did not move with him to the

University of Miami. Burklow told The Chronicle that NIH must

"treat everyone equally unless they have been 'debarred' from funding."

Although the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Inspector

General is investigating whether Nemeroff broke federal law, "at this

point a determination has not been made that a violation occurred in

this case," Burklow told ScienceInsider.

In general, because grants go to institutions, NIH deals with COI

violations by sanctioning the grantee institution for how it oversees

its investigators, not individuals. That suggests that some researchers

who break the rules and are sanctioned can find another job and "make a

new beginning," as Insel wrote to Nemeroff in an October e-mail

congratulating him on his new position.

In a letter today to the HHS Inspector General, Senator

Grassley (R–IA) wrote that he was "extremely disturbed" by The

Chronicle story and asks the Inspector General to "look into this

matter." A similar letter to the University of Miami asks for documents

and emails regarding Nemeroff's conflict of interest forms and NIH

grants.