WASHINGTON — Foreign governments and corporations could profit from American academic institutions’ failure to safeguard taxpayer-funded biomedical research, according to a set of new reports from a federal watchdog.
The reports, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general, show that 54% of research institutions funded by the National Institutes of Health — some 1,013 universities and academic centers — failed to publish financial conflict-of-interest policies online. In 2018, according to the report, the NIH conducted just three audits to determine grantee institutions’ own efforts to safeguard their research — down from 28 in 2012.
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I don’t know if you or HHS know that 50-75% of research has been reported to be unreproducible. If this is true, the problem is like stealing “fake news.” The system has never been good at supporting replication studies, so why not let other countries do it? With Open Science, they might even improve the ideas for the common good! The U.S. should shed its bias for English-only journals and blindspots by learning what others are doing abroad.
US pharmas are doing the same all the time, by profiteering from taxpayer-funded biomedical research, without paying their due royalties.