Washington

Firm contracts are critical to reducing conflicts in research partnerships between US universities and industry, according to a report prepared by senior representatives of both groups.

The study identifies conflicts of interest that arise when professors and universities have a financial stake in research results as one of the most troublesome problems. Individual researchers should consider stock divestment, full disclosure in all publications, or even resignation from particular projects, it says, whereas universities should develop multiple partnerships to avoid reliance on any one company.

The report, Working Together, Creating Knowledge: The University–Industry Research Collaborative Initiative, was released on 6 June. It is the result of a collaboration between the American Council on Education, an association of 1,800 universities and colleges, and the National Alliance of Business, an industry group.

“We have two different cultures that have to learn to work together,” says Nils Hasselmo, co-chair of the panel that produced the report and president of the Association of American Universities, which represents the largest US research universities. The other co-chair was Hank McKinnell, chief executive of Pfizer, the New York-based pharmaceutical company.

McKinnell says that one of the most important recommendations is that collaborations should have contracts that cover every aspect from the outset. Many universities and researchers start working together with significant portions of these agreements incomplete, he says.

The report also advises companies that they should pay the full overhead rate set by the federal government for each university, over and above the direct costs of research. Traditionally, many companies have negotiated lower rates.

But Sanford Chodosh, president of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research, an ethics organization based in Boston, says that the report does not go far enough in addressing the problem of conflicts of interest in clinical research. He says that the report failed to address, for example, the ways in which companies influence the choice of research results that are made public. “A lot of the stuff that gets done never gets published,” he says.