Mechanism
Oversight paid for by the overseen
A regulator, reviewer or standard-setter whose budget, staff or authority depends on the parties it is meant to judge.
Information and Perception
- Finding INF-5.9
- Primary record FactCheck.org's funding page lists Meta payments of $2,159,207.34 for fiscal years 2017 through 2025 and $104,244 in Meta fellowship grants for fiscal years 2021 through 2023, and states that Meta and Google "neither sought nor was given any control over our editorial decisions." PolitiFact's disclosure page lists Meta and TikTok as organizations that gave more than 5 percent of its revenue in the previous calendar year, without amounts.
Medicine and Public Health
- Finding MED-4.6
- Reported An EPA Inspector General memo found that a Monsanto scientist made substantive, uncredited contributions to a 2013 glyphosate review. EPA relied on the review in 2020, and EFSA cited it in 2023.
- Finding MED-6.1
- Primary record Industry user fees paid for 77 percent of FDA's prescription drug review program in fiscal year 2024.
- Finding MED-6.10
- Primary record FDA authorized four Glas e-cigarette pods on 5 May 2026, which it described as its first authorizations of non-tobacco, non-menthol e-cigarettes. A March 2026 draft guidance on flavored e-cigarette applications states that where the evidence shows comparatively lower youth initiation risk, FDA may consider a correspondingly lower magnitude of adult benefit necessary to support authorization.
- Finding MED-13.6
- Primary record In 2008, Connecticut's attorney general announced that his investigation found conflicts and excluded viewpoints in IDSA's Lyme guideline process, and obtained an agreement for a new review.
War and Defense
Politics and Government
- Finding POL-8.2
- Primary record Each Reserve Bank board has nine directors: three Class A chosen by and representing the stockholding banks, three Class B elected by the member banks to represent the public, and three Class C designated by the Board of Governors. Since the Dodd-Frank Act of 21 July 2010, the Class B and Class C directors appoint the Reserve Bank president, with Board approval, and the Class A directors take no part.
- Finding POL-8.5
- Primary record GAO reported that JPMorgan Chase was both a borrower and a vendor in the Fed's emergency programs while its chief executive served as a Class A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The New York Fed's releases name Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's chief executive, as a Class A director from January 2007, reelected in February 2010 for a term ending December 2012.
- Finding POL-8.6
- Primary record GAO identified at least 18 current and former directors from 9 Reserve Banks who were affiliated with institutions that used at least one emergency program, including 11 Class A directors who served between 2008 and 2010, and wrote that member-bank representatives on Reserve Bank boards create an appearance of a conflict of interest. GAO also found no evidence of systemic bias toward favoring particular institutions in the emergency programs.
- Finding POL-8.7
- Primary record Stephen Friedman resigned as Class C director and chairman of the New York Fed on 7 May 2009, writing that he had remained on the board under a Board of Governors waiver after Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company. The New York Fed's general counsel stated that Friedman's purchases of Goldman shares in December 2008 and January 2009 did not violate any Federal Reserve statute, rule or policy.
- Finding POL-8.17
- Primary record Greg Becker, chief executive of Silicon Valley Bank, served as a Class A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 1 January 2019 while the Fed supervised the bank. The OIG wrote that his board service "created an appearance of a conflict of interest for the System" and reported hearing of no influence on supervision.
Food and Agriculture
- Finding AGR-1.4
- Primary record GAO reported in 2010 that FDA reviews only the GRAS determinations companies submit, generally has no information about the others, and cannot estimate how many it was not told of. GAO also found that FDA had issued no conflict-of-interest guidance for the expert panels companies convene and did not ask for information on panelists' independence in GRAS notices.
- Finding AGR-1.5
- Peer-reviewed Of the 451 GRAS notices FDA received from 1997 to 2012, 22.4 percent were decided by an employee of the manufacturer, 13.3 percent by an employee of a consulting firm the manufacturer selected, and 64.3 percent by an expert panel selected by the manufacturer or its consultant. None used a standing panel selected by a third party; the study was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
- Finding AGR-1.6
- Peer-reviewed A study of the 403 GRAS notices FDA filed from 2015 to 2020 found that seven people held 46 percent of the 732 panel positions and found no evidence that panels followed FDA's guidance on convening them. The Environmental Defense Fund funded the study, and EDF was a plaintiff in the 2016 challenge to FDA's GRAS rule.
- Finding AGR-4.7
- Peer-reviewed A peer-reviewed analysis found that 19 of the 20 members of the 2020 advisory committee (95 percent) had at least one tie to an industry actor, counting 720 relationship-year instances, most of them research funding and board seats. The Nutrition Coalition funded the study, and Teicholz is a co-author.
- Finding AGR-4.8
- Primary record For the 2020 committee the USDA ethics official found no entry on any of the 20 members' OGE Form 450 that would prevent appointment. For the same cycle HHS and USDA declined NASEM's recommendations for an external third-party screener (cost and time) and a public list of provisional appointees (privacy). A coalition letter states that OGE Form 450 is exempt from public disclosure.
- Finding AGR-4.12
- Primary record In January 2026 HHS and USDA replaced the 2025 advisory committee report as the evidence base with a review by nine external reviewers selected through a federal contracting process. The departments' disclosure table lists funding or fees from beef, pork or dairy organizations for four of the nine.