My lede:

Two new reports shed harsh light on the institutional review boards that are charged with protecting human research subjects from harm.

The Assn. of American Medical Colleges in 2001 recommended that IRB members disclose any financial conflicts, yet 27.4% of review boards still do not require it, according to a survey of 107 IRB chairs reported in the April Academic Medicine.

“We’ve been talking about conflicts of interest in clinical research for almost 20 years now, and the fact that nearly 30% of IRBs in medical schools don’t have policies that require disclosure is completely astounding to me,” said Eric G. Campbell, PhD, senior author of the study and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The whole shebang.