New rules are coming for sanitizing conflicts of interest in research financed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), dispenser of the government's biggest budget for civilian science, some $31 billion this year. The conflicted need not fear. The draft rules, soon to be made final, continue the NIH's longtime practice of trust but don't verify, relying on universities to police the outside business dealings of their faculty members. There's the difficulty: universities have repeatedly demonstrated reluctance to pry into their faculty members' income-producing sidelines, or, in some cases, mainlines. Relations between campus administrators and scientists can be especially prickly as grant competition intensifies and the ethos of the time encourages professorial entrepreneurship. What dean wants to lose a grantladen superstar? As documented by federal investigators, the NIH tends to be aloof from enforcing its own rules about conflicts of interest. In this article, the author takes a look at one of the great running episodes in the annals of conflict of interest, a tale rich in official languor.