UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium event to feature presentation by W. Nicholson Price II, JD, Ph.D, a Visiting Legal Fellow at the Consortium.

The norms and laws governing scientific research are beginning to clash, and threaten to change the nature of scientific research and to hamper socially beneficial work. Current federal laws encourage scientists to innovate and license their work broadly, then restrict them from continuing that work.

Conflict of interest laws and policies, however, broadly restrict research on work in which the scientist has a financial interest. This conflict causes few problems under an older paradigm of scientific discoveries as discrete events without connection or sequence.

The very uncertainty surrounding the application of conflicts of interest may steer scientists toward conservative research and block otherwise valuable avenues of study. To resolve this unintended consequence, norms around conflicts of interest should be shifted from broad ex ante screening of potential conflicts to more limited ex post deterrence based on sanction of actual conflicts – i.e., those instances when the holding of conflicting interests actually significantly compromised the scientific process or caused harm.

Speaker Profile:  Nicholson Price works at the intersection of science and the law, studying both the impact of law on the conduct of scientific research and the impact of new scientific developments on the law.  He received his A.B. in Biological Sciences in 2004 from Harvard College and his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences in 2010 from Columbia University, where he used datamining techniques to evaluate protein properties influencing protein expression, solubility, and propensity to crystallize in structure-determination efforts.  He received his J.D. in 2011 from Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar every year in residence, won the Charles Bathgate Beck Prize in Property, and served for three years as Submissions Editor of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review.  His writing has appeared in that journal, the Insurance Law Bulletin, and Nature Biotechnology.  Beginning in August 2011 he will clerk for Judge Carlos T. Bea on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Please send your RSVP to freya@uchastings.edu.

CME and CLE (1) credit will be offered for attending this event:

The O'Brien Center for Scholarly Publications is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider. This activity is approved for a maximum of 1 MCLE credit. For CLE credit, please RSVP with your state BAR number and address to freya@uchastings.edu.

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education through the joint sponsorship of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine (UCSF) and the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy. UCSF is accredited by the ACGME to provide continuing medical education for physicians. Presenting faculty has disclosed no conflict of interest for this event.