He’s the latest to come along.

David Polly’s the latest American university professor to draw a senator’s attention to himself because of his remarkable conflicts of interest.  “Polly,” for instance, “was the primary investigator in a study using a Medtronic bone-growth product in rats that was sponsored by a $446,000 Department of Defense grant — but at the same time was a paid company consultant.”

Senator Grassley also wants to know why

Polly billed Medtronic to testify before Congress but never informed the Senate, saying only that he represented the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. For the two days Polly was in Washington, D.C., to testify in support of the Defense Department grant, Polly billed the company $7,000, according to Grassley.

All told, Grassley determined that Polly billed Medtronic more than $50,000 for several months of “lobbying” on behalf of the grant.

Medtronic spokeswoman Marybeth Thorsgaard said in a statement, “While we reimbursed Dr. Polly for his prep time and travel in connection with the hearing, to the best of our knowledge, we were not aware that he did not disclose his relationship with the company and expected that he would have done so.”

Polly, Polly. You are a scientist? A university professor? What? What the hell are you? And seven thou for two days… of what? Testifying for how long? Twenty minutes or so?

Polly wanna BIG cracker.

And how does Polly’s university monitor conflict of interest?

[University of Minnesota] General counsel Mark Rotenberg said typically the appropriate department dean and the faculty member themselves would monitor the compliance effort.

Polly monitors his own

crackers! Yummy!

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Yummy Update!

According to billing records, Dr. Polly’s billing rate was $4,750 for an eight-hour day in 2007, and he billed as many as 13,000 minutes a quarter — or 216 hours over three months. In some months, he conducted at least some Medtronic business on nearly every day.

His consulting log indicates that on one occasion he spent one minute to wake up a Medtronic executive, although he listed “no charge” for that service. He did bill Medtronic for the 30 minutes he spent in the car with that executive after waking him up.

Pretty, pretty Polly!