Charlie Rose

TomTherramus  04/17/2010 01:57 PM Report

I have respect for Dr Collin’s. He has made outstanding scientific contributions and seems to be a good man. I also can not begin to comprehend the kind of political pressures that he must be subject to. This being said, the indication in this interview that NIH conflict of interest (COI) policies are being carefully looked at is a cause for real concern.

COI is a complex and multifaceted issue. For an NIH-funded scientist giving advice to an established pharma company for personal gain, spinning off a biotech company from their lab or generating "preliminary data" for an RO-1 are all different activities, but each has the potential to generate significant COI. In rule making, one size does not fit all.

Also one needs to be very careful about what are the most pernicious sources of conflict impacting NIH research. For example, following a careful and systematic analysis, the Journal of Cell Biology estimated that up to 20% of accepted papers contained questionable data (i.e., potentially fraudulent data). The journal has subsequently reported that this rate did not decrease after the journal instituted an editorial data-screening process. One imagines that if the "Preliminary Data" sections of most NIH grants were scrutinized with the same rigor that the JCB undertook in their investigation, the amount of potential data fraud may be even more horrifying.

Given the quantitative evidence uncovered by the JCB – how can it be imagined that the impacts on data integrity engendered by proximity of a scientist to industry be any more serious than those resulting for the need for PI’s to become NIH-funded through a mechanism such as a regular RO1!

Perhaps the most important question to ask here is .

WHO STANDS TO GAIN WHEN INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS BECOME MORE STRICTLY REGULATED BY COI RULES ?

Does regulation serve the interests of universities and other institutions that accommodate scientists?

Yes ! Tying faculty in bureaucratic knots over COI is a highly effective way of regulating the activity of faculty and extending control over their intellectual property. If a university licenses a lucrative patent to a company the last thing the institution wants is input from the inventing scientist. The institution also has an incentive to prevent their creative faculty from coming up with new technology that may disrupt a profitable licence. In many cases, the interest of the institution and a licensee becomes aligned against individual scientists.

Does regulation serve the interests of licensing pharma and biotech companies?

Yes ! Of course it does! Keeping pesky scientists and their incessant demands for money to do research under control is the major goal of business relations with scientists. Nothing better than the NIH handing out draconian restrictions on the COI to achieve the goal of maximising money being directed into the pockets of business folks rather than into research and development.

IMO this need to control the inventors of intellectual property by COI rules is one reason that industry advocates such as Senator Charles Grassley have been making so much noise about COI. Maybe I’m cynical, but I can’t help but notice that big pharma has in the past been a major contributor to the Senator.

Dr Collins is entertaining the introduction of new COI rules that may further restrict the freedom of indvidual scientists to operate. But who speaks in the interests of scientists. Who asks questions like why is it that Science is one of the most regulated professions in the US. Is new COI regulation necessary because scientists are badly behaved relative to other professions? The evidence suggests NOT. Think financial professionals or the agricultural industry for example.

I would suggest that if the NIH does not handle this carefully, it may do a great deal of longterm damage to its own interests. If the NIH wants to efficiently do away with itself - then it should go ahead and "Kill the Golden Goose". Disincentivize the most talented extramurally funded scientists by imposing draconian COI rules. This action will almost certainly drive the most creative people into other professions and leave behind boring time servers. One also imagines if policies that select against best and brightest are instituted then the relevance of the NIH to wider public will follow a predictable path downwards.

If Dr Collin’s thinks that I’m blowing hot air then he should walk outside of his office – perhaps in disguise and start asking his own intramural folk what they honestly think of intramural rules on COI and related issues. He may be surprised by the cynicism and vitrole that he encounters. I am personally aware of a number top scientists that have left the NIH in disgust because of the burdensome imposition of regulation and waste in the intramural program.

I believe it is naive and wrongheaded to have the burden of COI rules fall wholly on the shoulders of individual scientists. If this becomes the case it will almost certainly transfer further say and resources to institutional and commercial interests at the expense of science and scientists.

Harnessing the creative efforts of geeky individuals is one key to re-invigorating our economy. If this is not done, in the long run IMHO NIH will be signing its own death warrant.

Dr Collins.... by acting in the best interests of individual scientists, the NIH will be acting in its own best interests.

Take care.

lodivar  04/16/2010 11:11 AM Report

i believe true science, because science is also made by God everything that exist are made by God even human all are made by God,the unlimited universe are also made by God...

winter  03/23/2010 04:35 PM Report

Everytime they try to tell you,"this incredible Universe couldn't have come about on its own" the response that trumps it is, if you can say your God came out of nowhere then ..." I think we all have access to the same failing deck of reasoning here don't you. Its All just too great to have an answer to. People who purport to have the answers are just trying to inspire a following. There are people I follow, Chomsky for one, but not to infallibility.

theskepticplatano  03/21/2010 01:19 PM Report

What I find interesting is how he dismiss what science has to say about the origin of the universe (in spite of all the data) and that atheism is the most irrational of all views. Yet he totally accept the idea of a god he can't even explain.

winter  03/17/2010 12:03 AM Report

Christians are always using agnostic arguments as if they were in the same camp and a defense for the far flung stories in the Bible. Miracles are just physics that haven't yet been discovered.

Okay, taxpayers get the benefit of research from their investments in form of the advancement of medicine,

what I want to know is who's getting the return on the money. I know, "its complicated"!

The entire health care machine should be scrutinized under the same rubric that Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex. That machine has discovered how to surgically tap into the fattest golden goose in the world, the American worker. I just took a stress test that was nothing more than a ten minute walk on a treadmill with an EKG attached and the cost was 1500 dollars ...a damn good wage for two weeks work for a working person. Now I'm told I need another stress test, this one is over 4000. dollars. And if I hadn't asked, noone would have volunteered the cost, since cost of procedures are the ...microbe in the room. I'm just making a general comment that we've gotten to the point where the business of health care, at all its levels, is more of a hostage taking, "pay or die" bastardization of supply and demand experiencing metastatization. You're all gouging us; with a smile and that removed attitude.

winter  03/17/2010 12:02 AM Report

Christians are always using agnostic arguments as if they were in the same camp and a defense for the far flung stories in the Bible. Miracles are just physics that haven't yet been discovered.

Okay, taxpayers get the benefit of research from their investments in form of the advancement of medicine,

what I want to know is who's getting the return on the money. I know, "its complicated"!

The entire health care machine should be scrutinized under the same rubric that Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex. That machine has discovered how to surgically tap into the fattest golden goose in the world, the American worker. I just took a stress test that was nothing more than a ten minute walk on a treadmill with an EKG attached and the cost was 1500 dollars ...a damn good wage for two weeks work for a working person. Now I'm told I need another stress test, this one is over 4000. dollars. And if I hadn't asked, noone would have volunteered the cost, since cost of procedures are the ...microbe in the room. I'm just making a general comment that we've gotten to the point where the business of health care, at all its levels, is more of a hostage taking, "pay or die" bastardization of supply and demand experiencing metastatization. You're all gouging us; with a smile and that removed attitude.

REMant  03/16/2010 12:28 PM Report

My definition of religion, I believe, is not the same as his, and instead of removing anthropomorphism to another realm as I think he does, I would argue that no one can logically object to Paley, for instance, no matter how it is thought the result or design came about. Scholastics solved the problem by arguing that while God had absolute power, he rarely if ever exercised it. Ironically many modern scientists have introduced skepticism into the process, opening up a new field for faith, when the very object of science is to look for regularity. Some might argue that design is all in the mind of man, not God, but what difference does that make, except to argue that we would be wise not to be too pigheaded, even about what God may or may not know?