A congressional investigation alleges that some researchers have failed to report all the drug-company money that they have received — and that universities may have been too slow to police them. So starts the leading Editorial in Nature this week (Nature 455, 835; 16 October 2008, free to access online).

A string of internal Emory University documents and e-mails made public last week after a hearing of the US Senate Committee on Finance, chaired by Senator Charles Grassley (Republican, Iowa), allege a web of consulting, lecturing and advisory-board relationships that Charles Nemeroff, chair of the psychiatry department at the University maintained with 16 pharmaceutical companies.

According to Nature, Nemeroff is the seventh academic psychiatrist this year that Grassley has exposed as allegedly underreporting drug-company income. His office says that there are more revelations to come. Grassley has begun pressuring the NIH to mete out real punishment — as in pulling grants — to spur institutions to enforce proper reporting.

What do you think of Sen Grassley’s plan to make companies disclose in a publicly accessible database all payments of more than $500 that they make to physicians? Would this make it easier for universties to report such payments?

See here for the full text of the Nature editorial.