With medical researchers and their institutions heavily dependent on money from drug and medical device companies, there is evidence that financial conflicts of interest are damaging the quality and trustworthiness of medical studies. This problem is the subject of a new book, Trust and Integrity in Biomedical Research: The Case of Financial Conflicts.

The book, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, was edited by Tom Murray, president of The Hastings Center, and Josephine Johnston, a research scholar. “Policies to manage conflicts of interest need to distinguish between those interests that will never be tolerated, those that will always be tolerated, and those that can be permitted only after following certain measures, such as further discloser of the financial interest,” says Johnston.