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Life scientists are eagerly accepting gifts from industry even when there are strings attached, according to a US journal. The materials, equipment and trips received often defy universities' ethics rules, says a study in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Almost half (43 per cent) of more than 2,000 researchers at 50 top US research universities surveyed for the study (see JAMA 279, 995; 1998) had accepted a gift in the past three years. The most common gifts were biomaterials (24 per cent), money (15 per cent), research equipment and trips to meetings (11 per cent each).

In many cases, however, researchers who accepted the gifts felt that fairly onerous conditions were attached to them. One-third of gift donors required pre-publication review of any resultant research, and one in five demanded ownership of all patentable results. These demands were most frequently made by donors of biomaterials, such as assays and cell lines.

Eric Campbell, a sociologist at the Health Policy Research and Development Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital at Boston who conducted the study with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, believes both sets of conditions are cause for concern.

Campbell says previous research of his suggests that industry can ask for publication delays of as long as six months to allow for review. He also points out that most universities have explicit policies on intellectual property rights that do not allow investigators to surrender patent rights.

“Gifts from industry to life scientists are a common and important form of academic-industrial research relationship,” his study concludes. “At times it may be prudent for faculty members to ‘look at a gift horse in the mouth’.”

Campbell didn't try to put a cash value on the gifts, saying that the value of such items as biomaterials can be difficult to assess. But two-thirds of recipients regarded the gifts as important to their work.

The study found that male researchers were more likely to get gifts than females, and senior faculty more likely to get them than junior faculty. Recipients were found to be significantly more productive than non-recipients — even when these gender and status differences were factored out.

In an accompanying editorial in JAMA, Lisa Bero of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California at San Francisco argues that the study makes “a compelling argument” for fresh guidelines on the acceptance of gifts.