University of Miami hires controversial expert

The UM medical school hired a psychiatrist who has been criticized for taking millions of dollars from drugmakers.
Charles Nemeroff, an Atlanta psychiatrist who was the subject of a Senate investigation concerning huge sums he received from drug companies, has been named chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Miami.
Last year Nemeroff, as the top psychiatrist at Emory University, was the focus of an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who said he was concerned about the millions the psychiatrist received from drug companies while conducting supposedly unbiased research for the National Institutes of Health on drugs made by the companies he was receiving money from.
On Thursday, Pascal Goldschmidt, dean of UM medical school, called Nemeroff ``an exceptional psychiatrist and an exceptional scientist who has one issue in which he recognizes he made a mistake,'' in not telling Emory how much he was getting from drug makers.
Goldschmidt said he had read investigative reports from Emory about Nemeroff's activities and Emory found nothing to indicate that payments the psychiatrist received had in any way influenced his research results.
Miami Herald