It’s how you manage conflict of interest.
You know.
University administrators are always telling us that it’s not a matter of avoiding conflict of interest but managing conflict of interest.
So here’s how you manage it if you’re chief of spinal surgery at UCLA. You take out your little conflict of interest form, and where it says Do you have a conflict? you say No.
[Senator Charles Grassley says that] Jeffrey Wang, chief of spine surgery at UCLA … didn’t inform the school of $459,500 Wang was paid from 2004 to 2007…. Companies that made payments such as consulting and speaking fees to Wang included medical-device makers Medtronic and FzioMed and the DePuy unit of Johnson & Johnson. Grassley says Wang “consistently checked no” on UCLA disclosure forms when asked whether he had received income of $500 or more from companies funding his clinical research.
Fellow UCLA professors of the spine! Show some backbone! Follow your chief!
Lie.