Supervisor–Student Relations: Examining the Spectrum of Conflicts of Interest in Bioscience Laboratories

Abstract

Much attention has been given to financial conflicts of interest (COIs) in bioscience research. Yet to date, surprisingly little attention has focused on other COIs that arise in supervisor--student relations. We examine a spectrum of related situations, ranging from standard graduate supervision through to dual relationships sometimes found in research with commercial potential. We illustrate some of the less-obvious factors that can bias supervisory judgment, and situate financial COI along a spectrum of forces that are deserving of recognition. We conclude by providing two sets of recommendations: one for individual supervisors, and the other for institutions and policy-makers.

Keywords:

• bioscience
• conflict of interest
• laboratory
• professors
• students
• university

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Catherine Olivier, Jason Behrmann, and Vural Ozdemir for their extremely helpful comments and their insights into the culture of bioscience laboratories; Wayne Norman for helpful comments on a draft; and Elise Smith, Vincent Couture, Ashley Pringle, and Aimee Smith for their valuable research assistance. This study was supported by grants from University of Montreal and the Institute of Genetics of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (ELH-147697).

Notes

¹In some institutions, the supervisor may even have an obligation to see a student through to completion, or abandonment of the degree; in contrast, a student is usually free to change supervisors at their discretion.

²In fact, there is some empirical evidence to the contrary. See, for example (Moore et al., 2003).

³Levels of remuneration for student work vary enormously across universities and disciplines. But for at least some work—such as grading multiple-choice tests, or photocopying—students are almost always paid significantly more than the wage (probably near the legal minimum wage) that such work would demand outside of a university.

⁴Students are often involved in the patenting process, including making patentable discoveries. Some universities in Canada have provisions in their thesis submission guidelines that allow for a student to delay (e.g., by one year) the publication of their thesis in the national library system, in order to protect potential intellectual property or important, publishable information that might be stolen by a competitor.

⁵On the importance of ethics training more generally for bioscience students and faculty, see Eisen and Berry (2002).