"What one wants to be sure of is that those individuals who are being supported by it aren't holding equity in those companies," he says.

According to Martin, FAS doesn't encounter similar concerns because it lacks these types of clinical facilities.

Most of the money received by FAS professors from for-profit companies comes in the form of gifts that have no restrictions on their use, and therefore cause little concern about conflict-of-interest.

Alan K. Long, laboratory director and director of graduate studies in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, says that the money his department's labs receive from the government comes with many pages of guidelines on its use. Grants from corporate sponsors, on the other hand, are "the best kind of money you can get--no strings attached."

Within the chemistry department, outside funding generally comes from large pharmaceutical companies such as Merck, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Hoffman-LaRoche.

Long says this kind of funding--unlike that from federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH)--rarely comes with limits on how it can be spent. For example, corporate grant money has also been used by sponsored departments to fund tuition and stipends for graduate student programs.

Because of this, FAS guidelines strive to prevent an imbalance between the time and energy a Faculty member devotes to Harvard and to other activities, rather than focusing on specific interactions with corporations.