Assessing Faculty Financial Relationships With Industry: A Case Study

CONTEXT A growing number of academic researchers receive industry funding for clinical and basic research, but little is known about the personal financial relationships of researchers with their industry sponsors. OBJECTIVES To assess the extent to which faculty researchers have personal financial relationships with the sponsors of their research, the nature of those financial relationships, and efforts made at the institutional level to address disclosed financial relationships and perceived conflicts of interest. DESIGN AND SETTING Case study of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Data sources included disclosure forms and official documents maintained by the UCSF Office of Research Administration from December 1980 to October 1999, including decisions made by the UCSF Chancellor's Advisory Panel on Relations with Industry. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Number and types of personal financial relationships with external sponsors (positive financial disclosures from all clinical, basic, or social science faculty who were principal investigators), amount of annual income received from sponsors, and decisions and management strategies used by the advisory panel. RESULTS By 1999, almost 7.6% of faculty investigators reported personal financial ties with sponsors of their research. Throughout the study period, 34% of disclosed relationships involved paid speaking engagements (range, $250–$20,000 per year), 33% involved consulting agreements between researcher and sponsor (range,