The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) denied allegations of favoritism when they gave out grants to researchers who "coincidentally" were members of their tobacco advisory.
In 2013, FDA recommended that millions of dollars should be awarded to researchers who were part of their tobacco advisory committee. As a result, the agency rejected the research projects endorsed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as to having better scientific merit.
Jed Rose, director of Duke University's Center for Smoking Cessation, received a very high score from the NIH panel but was rejected by the FDA.
"The close association between the people who recommended which grants should be funded, and the advisers whose grants actually received funding, could have influenced the evaluation process," Rose told Reuters.
On the other hand, the federal agency maintained that there was no favoritism that happened. David Ashley, director of the office of science of the FDA's tobacco division, explained that the grants awarded to the members of their tobacco advisory panel were coincidental.
The grants awarded in September 2013 were given to help the NIH and FDA to produce better policies regarding tobacco manufacture and use. The initial funding for the grants was $53 million but expected to increase to $273 million in the next five years.
The NIH assessed more than 50 proposals based on its potential scientific and technical merit. The grant recipients included Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, Thomas Eissenberg, professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Dr. Jonathan Samet, a professor at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
David Abrams, director of Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies, commented that the FDA's reasons for choosing the grant recipients may be plausible. Abrams applied for a grant himself, but the NIH panel gave him a bad score.
"You could argue that it's not totally surprising because they are some of the best scientists," he told Reuters. "It certainly does look a little odd."
