Earlier this year, Minesh Mehta, a cancer specialist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, co-authored a medical article on TomoTherapy, a radiation therapy system developed by researchers at the university.
Any doctor reading the article would have thought Mehta was an unbiased researcher with no conflict of interest or financial stake in TomoTherapy Inc. After all, the journal article said Mehta reported no potential conflicts of interest.But documents obtained from the university tell a different story.Those records show Mehta had told the university he would make more than $20,000 in 2008 working as a TomoTherapy consultant. He also owned stock options in the company.
Mehta was one of at least nine UW physicians whose conflicts listed on financial disclosures to the university did not match what was revealed to the medical world in their published articles.