Hundreds of financial conflicts of interest among university researchers have not been investigated by the National Institutes of Health, an agency that should police them, according to a new audit report. The report, by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services--NIH's parent agency--describes a dysfunctional system that falls short of public accountability. It relies largely on universities with NIH grants to police themselves, merely requiring them to notify the agency that conflicts were resolved. More than 90 percent of such notices do not explain how the institutions handled the problems. Worse, the NIH rarely asks universities to provide these missing details, the inspector general said in the January audit. The NIH, in a response, argued that it was following existing regulations, which provide "an appropriate framework for the effective management" of conflicts and do not require the agency to gather details from universities. But one bioethicist observed that if universities' reports about conflicts contain no useful information, their submission is a pointless exercise. Jeffrey P. Kahn, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, said the NIH "has no evidence to support their assertion that things are working fine."