Conflicts of Interest on Expert Committees : The Case of FDA Drug Advisory Committees

Governments and firms often use committees of experts to help them make complexdecisions, but conflicts of interest could bias experts' recommendations. We focus on whetherfinancial ties to drug companies bias FDA drug advisory committee (AC) members' voting ondrug approval recommendations. We find little significant evidence that AC members vote intheir financial interests. We find stronger evidence that experts' characteristics such as expertiselevel or associations with advocacy groups drives voting tendencies (biases) either for or againstapproval. We show that a Congressional Act that effectively excluded financially-conflicted ACmembers resulted in a sharp drop in average AC member expertise, and an unintended increasein approval voting. Our results have implications for the popular goal of eliminating financialconflicts from all medical decisions. Eliminating conflicts could sharply reduce the level ofexpertise of the decision makers and lead to unexpected voting tendencies