Is variation in policy implementation a concern?
In the absence of a clear and consistent definition of conflict of interest, individual committees have developed their own sets of standards in evaluating financial disclosures. Those standards appear to be based on specific institutional values that the committees felt were important to protect. Thus, as noted above, some campuses put the protection of students at the forefront of their standards; others evaluated clinical trials according to a different standard. Similar cases were interpreted and managed differently, depending in part on the orientation of the committee to these values or standards as well as the specific details of each case. It is important to note that all of these values are considered commonly held within academic communities.20 Whether variation in implementation is viewed by some policymakers as problematic may depend, in part, on the goals of the policies themselves. One obvious goal is to protect human research subjects and to encourage scientific integrit
