Sen. Grassley Busts Major Depression Researcher, Pharma Whore Over Pharma Money

You just had to know that Sen. Charles Grassley's (R-Iowa) inquiries into psych researchers taking federal research money on one hand and pharma money on the other and not honestly reporting the conflict would eventually reach Charles Nemeroff, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University and one of the top dogs in depression research. And, wow, has it ever!

Between 2000 and 2006, Nemeroff took in almost $1 million in consulting fees and whatnot from GlaxoSmithKline but copped to making less than $35,000 on university disclosure forms. And that's just for one company. Nemeroff was reportedly on the advisory boards of 12 pharma companies. He took in about $1.8 million between 2000 and 2007 from other companies for a total of $2.8 million. That works out to $400,000 a year.

I'd say Chuck is going to be in hot water over this, since he was taking money from NIH at the same time and NIH allows its grantees to only rake in $10,000 a year from private companies. And while he was taking in the big bucks from Glaxo, Nemeroff was openly lying to his university that he would take in less than $10,000 a year. Seriously. This is one of the most blatant examples of pharma whoring I have ever seen.

Nemeroff didn't have the guts to respond to question from the New York Times.

At this point, you have to wonder when Grassley is going to call for public hearings. And you've got to wonder when NIH is going to start withholding research grants from universities in order to force them to clean up the dirty world of research.

Psychiatrist Danny Carlat has some thoughts on all of this. Add yours in comments.