There has been a lot of buzz lately about the ethics issues professors run into when they don't disclose their consulting relationships. Most of that buzz has centered on medical schools, where faculty relationships with drug companies have been shown to pose serious conflicts of interest. Med schools are under pressure now to clarify, tighten, and enforce their policies on same--and they should be. Margaret Soltan is doing a remarkable job of chronicling this unfolding piece of academic history over at University Diaries--and while I sometimes nudge her about painting her criticisms with too wide a brush (not all academic clinicians and medical research professors are in bed with the drug companies, and it's important to remember that a great many are profoundly ethical in their professional conduct), she's doing yeoman's service.

I thought of the this the other day when I ran across the story of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber. Here's Atlantic blogger Megan McArdle:

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber has become the go-to economist for fans of the health care reform wending its way through congress. He regularly produces analyses showing how great reform is going to be for people buying insurance in the individual market, and has been a vocal advocate for the excise tax.

[...]

He shows up in the work of the left-half of the health care commentariat so often that if I tried to round up representative cites, this piece would be published sometime next month, and you'd die of old age before you made your way through it.

But he probably wouldn't have been cited with quite the same authority--particularly by mainstream media--if he'd been more upfront about the fact that he's being paid almost $300,000 by the Obama Administration for "special studies and analysis" of the health care bills, as a blogger on Firedoglake revealed last night. Ben Smith has the rundown; apparently most of the health care beat reporters were as unaware of the relationship as I was.

I certainly would not have written about him the same way, even though I am sure that what Gruber is saying comports with what he believes. My guess is that like me, most journalists would have treated him as an employee of the administration, with all the constraints that implies, rather than passing along his pronouncements as the thoughts of an independent academic. Christina Romer is a very, very fine economist. But her statements about administration policy are treated differently from statements by, say, her colleague Brad De Long.

Given how influential Professor Gruber's work has been during the health care debate, that's rather a large problem.

Gruber's explanation that "he disclosed this to reporters whenever they asked" is not very compelling. I don't see how anyone even tangentially connected to policy work could fail to realize that this was a material conflict of interest that should have been disclosed, and reporters cannot take up all their interview time going through all the sources who might have been paying or otherwise influencing their interviewee.

The standard is even higher for people who are taking public funds, and not only Professor Gruber, but the administration had a responsibility to disclose the relationship. Yet a post on the OMB blog signed by Peter Orszag cited Brownstein's Gruber quotes without mentioning the relationship.

To be clear, I'm sure that Jonathan Gruber is in favor of passing this health care bill, and thinks it will do a lot of genuine good. I don't think that funding automatically discredits the message; his work should stand on its own merits. But journalists and academics are granted a presumption of independence that is not given to most other professions, and that gives them a special duty to make it clear whenever there is a relationship that people might reasonably think has affected their views. Lefties were rightly furious when journalists turned out to have been taking money from the Bush administration, and I'm glad to see that at least some of them are holding Obama to the same standard.

I'm also listening to a vacuum--one where I'd hope to hear some discussion of academic ethics and standards, not just for Gruber, not just at MIT, but generally. What Gruber did isn't cool--he sold the appearance of disinterested expertise to a highly partisan political effort to pass a hugely transformative and massively contested piece of legislation. And he lied about it. Contrary to Gruber's initial claims, he did not always disclose the relationship when asked--as the New York Times has since publicly stated: "Like other writers for the Op-Ed page," the Times noted Saturday, "Professor Gruber signed a contract that obligated him to tell editors of such a relationship. Had editors been aware of Professor Gruber's government ties, the Op-Ed page would have insisted on disclosure or not published the article."

There's no argument that Gruber made a hash of things from journalistic and legislative standpoints. Journalists and bloggers are stepping up right now to point that out and to do a little welcome self-policing. And on the Hill, Senator Grassley is demanding better transparency standards for people who are under government contract to opine on health care legislation.

But it's worth noting that Gruber's errors cut another way, too. He's violated academic professional standards in a really elemental way. And his behavior calls into question the ethical standards and working culture of his department, his discipline, and his university.

When asked if he thought his failures to disclose were a problem, Gruber told the Boston Globe that "I don't think it's an issue." But it is.

MIT requires faculty members to disclose to the university all outside professional activities, and to consult closely with administrators on how best to conduct those activities to ensure that conflicts of interest are minimized and that ethical standards are maintained. Did Gruber do that? If so, what advice did he get? If not, what mechanisms does MIT have in place for holding him accountable for his ethical lapses? Do these lapses fall under the category of research misconduct--which MIT takes very seriously? If so, what will MIT do from here? If not, why not?