For the past few months, the US Senate Finance Committee has been investigating various high-profile academic researchers for undisclosed conflicts of interest involving payments from pharma for speaking, research and consulting and simultaneously receiving NIH grants.

An NIH regulation requires researchers to report to their universities any “significant financial interests” they hold in research financed by the agency - defined as income or equity interest of $10,000 from a company or 5-percent ownership of its stock. The universities are required to tell the NIH whether they were able to manage or eliminate the conflicts in order to avoid bias in the research findings.

However, the NIH has been criticized by the Chuck Grassley, the committee’s ranking Republican, for failing to monitor conflicts. Earlier this year, in fact, Norka Ruiz Bravo, who until recently was the NIH deputy director for extramural research, maintained the agency couldn’t simply monitor such things. She was recently replaced amid assertions by outgoing NIH Elias Zerhouni that the agency would work harder (back story here, here and here).

This morning, an NIH Blue Ribbon panel tackles this and other pressing issues. In a short while, Sally Rockey, the NIH’s acting deputy director for extramural research, will be speaking about “Assuring Objectivity in Research: NIH and Financial Conflict of Interest.” She is scheduled to begin at 11:30 am EST. You can watch by clicking here. We wonder if she will discuss the case of Ned Feder, a former NIDDK employee who complained publicly about what he perceived as the NIH’s failure to monitor conflicts, but was instead disclipined for speaking out (back story).