The main taxpayer-backed agency that funds health-related research needs to pay more heed to ethical lapses and financial conflicts of interest, says a group of more than 100 scientists, physicians, medical ethicists, journal editors and others.

In a letter today to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, a group called PharmedOut urged the agency to fund more research on topics such as ghostwriting and industry funding for academics.

“[W]e ask that you acknowledge the research gap on the effect of conflicts of interest and commercial influence on medical decision making and set in motion a process that leads to recognition of the importance of funding studies on research ethics, the beliefs and behaviors of researchers and clinicians, and the effects of industry-academic relationships on the generation and dissemination of medical knowledge,” the letter read.

Adriane Fugh-Berman, a physician at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC and the director of PharmedOut, said that the NIH has tended to reject grant applications relating to medical ethics. “I think that NIH has thought that it doesn’t comes under their domain, and the trouble is that it doesn’t come under anybody’s domain,” she told ScienceInsider. Fugh-Berman also willingly admitted that the letter is somewhat self-serving for the near-broke PharmedOut project, which aims to fight shady pharmaceutical promotion practices. “We’ve been out of money for a year,” she told The Scientist.

The group called for a sit down with Collins. Let’s see if he sticks with his purported open door policy.