Letter to the editor

To the Editor:

I write to clarify Columbia Business School’s position on conflict of interest policy, and to address the suggestion in the recent editorial, “For full disclosure” (April 15) that I had personally “…expressed disapproval of stronger policy implementation.”

In fact, together with the faculty of the Business School, I strongly favor required disclosure of outside interests. In January 2009, a Business School committee that I chaired presented a set of recommendations to individuals in the University and the Senate responding to a draft version of the University’s new conflict of interest policy. Our recommendations included a requirement that sources of funding be disclosed in all faculty research including “…consulting products, journal articles, opinion pieces, testimony, working papers, web sites, etc.” We also proposed that “Information about significant financial interests that have the potential of a conflict of interest should be disclosed on a confidential basis to the Office of the General Counsel...”

This report, written well before recent concerns about academic conflict of interest, reflected our faculty’s views on this issue and support of strong disclosure policies. My statements to the University Senate did oppose one specific requirement proposed at the time: that faculty members submit all funded research projects in advance for review and approval. I believed then, and believe now, that pre-approval of research by a faculty committee (other than research that can harm human subjects) is a violation of free speech and would negatively impact Columbia’s ability to recruit new faculty.

We will make the Business School’s 2011 conflict of interest policy report available immediately after our faculty has approved it.

Sincerely,
Christopher J. Mayer
Senior Vice Dean and Paul Milstein Professor of Real Estate
Columbia Business School
April 23, 2011