At the same time, she says, certain safeguards must be in place so that researchers do not feel pressured to falsify data. The FDA currently prohibits doctors from owning stock in companies dealing in pharmaceuticals they are researching, she says.

"There's no incentive for cheating, as far as I can see," she says.

Dale, however, says the disclosure process has been instrumental in isolating the cases that have come before the committee so far.

"It would be hard to regulate something like this on an ad hoc basis," she says, nothing, "What we have found is that the vast majority of faculty is very honest and the conflicts have been quite readily resolvable."

Possible Conflicts

Though Medical School administrators refuse to release the names of physicians whose cases are being examined by the committee, The Boston Globe reported last year that Dr. Jonathan O. Cole, a Harvard psychiatrist, was under investigation for a possible conflict of interest.

Higginson Professor of Cellular and Molecular Physiology Howard Green may also have a conflict of interest of the type investigated by the committee. In 1986, Green founded BioSurface Technology, a company that cultures patients' skin cells for grafting back onto their skin after surgery. While most of the dermatologist's pioneering research on the technique was conducted while he was at MIT, Green now holds a post at Harvard.

Green did not return phone calls from The Crimson last week.