Editorial: Tangled loyalties at top of stem cell institute

Internal conflicts have hurt and hampered the oversight committee of California's $3 billion stem cell institute since voters created it in 2004 by passing Proposition 71.

As designed by Robert Klein, the author of that initiative, a majority of this 29-member oversight committee consists of administrators and scientists whose institutions have a stake in the taxpayer money the board hands out for stem cell research.

Although members of the "Independent Citizens Oversight Committee" are required to abstain from all decisions that could directly affect them or their institutions, at least one has now been caught using back channels in an attempt to influence a major grant.

John Reed, a respected scientist and oversight board member who heads the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, became disappointed earlier this year when the institute's staff ruled that a Burnham-affiliated researcher was ineligible to receive a $638,000 grant. Institute reviewers and the oversight board (with Reed abstaining) had already approved the grant, but the institute's staff later determined the researcher was not a full-time Burnham employee.

In an Aug...