Francisco Prieto, a Sacramento
physician and a patient advocate member of the board, said in an email:
“ It seems to me there's a bit of 'damned if we do and damned if we don't' here. If the ICOC (the agency governing board) decides to listen to some of the members of the public who come to our meetings and overrule a recommendation of the Grants Working Group(GWG), we're slammed for letting emotion trump science, or bowing to special interests. If we just accept the rankings of the GWG and approve all their recommendations, we're criticized for not being truly independent. I think we don't do it often (for good reason) but should and do retain the right to look at other factors besides those our scientific reviewers do, and make our own decisions about funding. We are ultimately responsible, not the scientific reviewers.
“As for the issue of their disclosure of personal conflicts of interest, from what I've read of the NIH processes, ours are no less strict. The NIH requires that reviewers disclose any conflicts to their institutions which I believe must disclose them to the NIH, but I have not seen anything requiring them to disclose all their personal financial & other interests publicly, as we (ICOC members) have to. When we were assembling our group of reviewers initially, the fear was that many of the best scientists would turn us down if we required them to make the kind of personal disclosures we have to. I don't know how many we might actually lose if that were the case, but as you know we do require them to disclose to CIRM, and they have to leave the room when any application for which they have a conflict is discussed.”
Our take: Prieto is right about the
board being perched on the horns of a dilemma, which has a lot to do
with Proposition 71, which created the agency, and American
scientific traditions, which place an extraordinary value on the
“integrity” of the review process. In this case, integrity refers
to adherence to reviewers' scientific judgments.
Proposition 71 placed the legal
authority for grant approvals in the hands of the CIRM board, which
has overridden decisions by reviewers in only 2 percent of the cases
since 2005. However, that was enough, with at least one high profile
case coupled with public appeals, to cause the Institute of Medicine
to raise concerns about the integrity of the CIRM grant review
process. Traditionally, peer reviewers are deemed to be the most
capable of making the scientific decisions about grant applications,
rather than a board appointed by University of California chancellors
and elected state officials.
Yet, if the board concedes the
decisions to the grant reviewers, state law is likely to require
public disclosure of their financial interests, a move that the board
has opposed for years. Former CIRM Chairman Robert Klein repeatedly
advised the board during its public grant approval processes that
reviewers' actions were only ”recommendations” and that the board
was actually making the decisions. However, it has long been apparent
that the reviewers were making the de facto decisions. A CIRM memo in
January confirmed that, producing the 98 percent figure.
The issues involving disclosure by
reviewers, integrity of peer reviews, the language of Proposition 71
and state law are difficult and may, in some cases, be at odds.
However, it makes little difference
what the NIH is doing. It is a much different organization and has
had a history of conflict of interest problems that it has been
trying to work through.
The trend in the academic and
scientific research community has been towards more public disclosure
rather than less because of many well-documented instances of
problems. What is at stake is the public's faith in scientific
research and the integrity of public institutions.
Our thanks to Prieto for his comments
on this important subject.
John Simpson had the answer to all of these vexing conflict questions. Do the whole thing in public! Confidential peer review is just an excuse for secrecy. Any CIRM observer has seen that scientists are more than willing to discuss and argue about their grants before the ICOC if they think that will get them funded.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, folks asking for millions of bucks should be willing to put the applications out into the public realm like most requests for funding. And, the analysis/review of those grants should take place in full public view. Then the ICOC members without conflict can vote the applications up or down in public. As Simpson noted, Connecticut conducts its reviews in public. We need to stop treating the research community like some delicate flower that will wilt if it is exposed to sunlight.