Earlier this month, three prominent psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital were sanctioned for violating conflict of interest rules. The trio received grant money from various drugmakers while studying their meds, but failed to report some of the outside income to the institutions while also receiving grants from the National Institutes of Health (see this).

The move followed a long-running controversy over the interplay between academia and pharma, which was prompted by a high-profile US Senate Finance Committee probe over concerns that such undisclosed relationships may unduly influence medical research and practice. For their sins, the trio issued a mea culpa.

The most prominent among them is Joseph Biederman, a psychiatrist with a national profile who is often credited with spurring the use of antipsychotics for treating children at a time when the meds were not yet approved for most youngsters (back story). Along with Biederman, the others sanctioned were Thomas Spencer and Timothy Wilens.

As it so happens, Biederman had received career development grants from the NIH - specifically, the National Insitute of Mental Health - between 1994 and 1999 to mentor several individuals as they went about conducting research. And who were among those aspiring researchers that Biederman was mentoring? Spencer and Wilens, according to the Biederman curriculum vitae (see page 9).

Another of his disciples was Jeff Bostic, who is also at Massachusetts General Hospital, and was named in a 2009 lawsuit joined by the US Department of Justice alleging Forest Laboratories promoted its antidepressants for pediatric use without FDA approval and paid kickbacks to docs to encourage prescriptions. He received $750,000 in payments for giving talks on using these drugs in children.

There is something to be said for studying at the feet of a master. But there is always the possibility of picking up bad habits… or worse.