Some Principles Require Principals: Why Banning “Conflicts of Interest” Won’t Solve Incentive Problems in Biomedical Research

This Article seeks to bring greater discipline to the analysis of conflicts of interest in biomedical research, and by doing so to reveal trends and tensions in the research enterprise that require a more deliberate and longer term response. By comparing tensions in biomedical research to those affecting indisputably "relational" professionals such as lawyers, this Article concludes that "conflict of interest" is the wrong language to describe most of these situations, and leads to the wrong solutions. Conflict of interest analysis in law derives from an image of professional obligation running directly from expert agent to dependent principal. Because a dyadic researcher-subject relationship is no longer the essence of biomedical research, this Article asserts, attempting to insulate researchers from concerns other than the wellbeing of research participants using conflict of interest discourse will be ineffective or counterproductive.