All humans have conflicts of interest. Scientists have an obligation to try to prevent those conflicts from interfering with their objectivity. However, this may not always be possible, so in the interest of full(er) disclosure, here are some of the factors that are most likely to influence me, consciously or unconsciously. I got the idea for making a page like this from Michael Eisen’s (@mbeisen) Conflicts Page.
tl;dr: Areas of biggest conflicts are public funding of research and higher education, public policy related to noise sensitivity, noise exposure, hearing impairment, and open access publication. I also have an ongoing foreign connection with researchers in Germany, and past connections to The Netherlands and Hong Kong.
- I am a salaried, full-time employee of Purdue University. I have an obvious institutional conflict of interest in relation to any issues involving the department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, and more generally public higher education in Indiana and in the US.
- I have received, and continue to seek, research funding from the NIH. I therefore have a clear conflict of interest when it comes to issues related to federal funding of research.
- I also have applied or intend to apply for research funding from other branches of the US government, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health), the Veteran’s Administration, and the Department of Defense, as well as various foundations and private enterprises that may have an interest in promoting specific policies related to environmental and workplace noise, and diagnostics and treatments related to sound sensitivity and hearing impairment. I will list these here if/when they arise.
- Other organizations to which I may submit research grant proposals are based in Europe, and I have an ongoing collaboration with colleagues in Germany. Therefore, I have a strong conflict of interest with respect to issues related to science funding and international collaboration/communication, especially with respect to the governments of Germany and the EU.
- I am a member and Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. Therefore, to the extent that I generally agree with and support the society’s positions (and have occasionally helped to craft them), I am likely to have conflicts with respect to issues related to the Society’s position on a variety of topics, especially environmental and workplace noise policy and federal and state science funding policy. Similarly, I am a member of ASHA (without clinical certification), SPR, and ARO. Thus, I have a conflict of interest with respect to issues such as clinical certification and licensure on which ASHA has taken a public stance, and also any policy issues as SPR and ARO may take positions on.
- I have been paid to speak at universities and by professional organizations about my work on listening effort. I don’t know exactly what this affects in terms of contexts, but I clearly have a financial conflict of interest when it comes to publicity surrounding my own research, and I definitely feel good will toward organizations who like my work enough to pay for me to come to them to talk about it…
Speech Perception and Cognitive Effort Lab 