Conflicts of Interest
Advances in biotechnology, computer science, and other fields of science have resulted in faculty increasingly entering into collaborative arrangements with industry and other business partners in fostering the development of their research and incubator business programs. Links with the industrial and business sectors provide crucial research resources and channel scientific discoveries into the public domain. Such arrangements ultimately stimulate innovation and creativity through transference of entrepreneurial activities.
In the University's role as facilitator for these pursuits, these important opportunities must be developed cautiously. Researchers have an overriding responsibility to maintain the highest standards of objectivity and freedom from bias. Incidents of scientists allowing personal or outside interests to cloud their professional judgment in conducting research are disturbing and unacceptable. Such incidents are serious but they are ever more troubling because, if true, such abuses of trust may pose risks to research subjects, institutional and individual policies and reputations, and the well-being of society.
Georgia State University Conflict of Interest in Research Policy addresses these issues. It offers a conceptual framework and defines institutional and individual responsibilities. Georgia State University believes that conflicts of interest are inevitable whenever such arrangements are developed. The goal is to manage effectively these conflicts so that faculty, staff, students, and industry/business partners clearly understand the conflicts of interest and are aware of the manner in which these conflicts are being handled and addressed.