NIH Concerns with Foreign Entities

David P. Norton, Ph.D, Vice President for Research

On August 23, 2018, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins issued a statement to the NIH extramural research community about NIH’s concerns of foreign influence on NIH researchers and peer reviewers.
We call out from the letter, NIH is specifically concerned about:

1) failure by some researchers at NIH-funded institutions to disclose substantial contributions of resources from other organizations, including foreign governments, which threatens to distort decisions about the appropriate use of NIH funds;
2) diversion of intellectual property in grant applications or produced by NIH-supported biomedical research to other entities, including other countries; and
3) in some instances, sharing of confidential information by peer reviewers with others, including in some instances with foreign entities, or otherwise attempting to influence funding decisions.

Dr. Collins announced the formation of working group of the Advisory Committee to the Director on Foreign Influences on Research Integrity to further explore the issue and the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) will be providing additional information on this issue in the future and we will follow-up as we learn more about the Advisory Committee activities.
The University of Florida is committed to compliance with NIH regulations and with good stewardship of all sponsored funds. In addition, please be reminded that all proposals for outside funding need to comply with requirements for reporting of current and pending support.

Additional resources are available at:
• http://research.ufl.edu/compliance/conflict-of-interest-and-outside-activities.html
• https://grants.nih.gov/policy/peer/index.htm
• https://grants.nih.gov/grants/forms/othersupport.htm