Emory University said it removed Charles Nemeroff as chairman of the university’s psychiatry and behavioral sciences department after finding he failed to disclose more than $800,000 in payments from GlaxoSmithKline as required by university conflict of interest rules.
Nemeroff, department chair for 17 years, will remain a professor and must follow new restrictions on outside activities, the Atlanta university said in a statement posted on the Web site of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.
The committee’s ranking Republican, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, has faulted Nemeroff and researchers at universities such as Harvard and Stanford for failing to disclose payments from drug- and medical device-makers. His criticisms led the U.S. National Institutes of Health in October to suspend a $9.3 million psychiatric-research grant to Emory on a study led by Nemeroff.
“As a department chair, particularly one who has been under heightened scrutiny, Dr. Nemeroff should have reported the payments,” Thomas J. Lawley, dean of the university’s medical school, said in the statement. “We hold our department chairs to high standards at Emory because they are institutional representatives as well as professional role models.”
Emory found Nemeroff was paid $800,000 from Glaxo for more than 250 speeches from January 2000 to January 2006. The university said it focused on Nemeroff’s payments from Glaxo rather than other drugmakers because “it was the largest single payer” and cooperated with the university by providing complete records of the financial transactions.
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