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Conflict of Interest and Intellectual Property
Conflict of Interest
  • A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person has a financial, personal, or other interest that may bias or compromise that person’s judgment concerning that person’s ethical, legal or professional duties.

  • COIs raise ethical issues because they are risk factors for misconduct, bias, regulatory non-compliance, and other serious problems in research.

  • COIs can also undermine the public’s trust in research, even when they don’t lead to bias or other bad problems.

  • The NIH has extensive rules for COIs related to federal employment. Nothing in this training is intended to conflict with or supersede those rules. To learn more about COI pertaining to federal employment, contact your IC’s ethics office. See: NIH Ethics Office https://ethics.od.nih.gov/
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