By Hailey Konnath, assisted by Kiah Haslett, editor

About this story: Following a bad review from the American Medical Student Association on the conflict of interest policies at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Medicine and Creighton University School of Medicine, a reporter and editor from the Daily Nebraskan investigated this story.

Haslett created a database using ProPublica's Dollars for Docs information and crosslisting Nebraska payment recipients to see if they had connections to UNMC and Creighton Medical.

Haslett found both medical schools ranked low for their national conflict of interest policies. Haslett and Konnath were denied a public records request for disclosure forms from UNMC doctors that would tell whether the doctors/professors followed procedure and reported the payments to the school. The attorney general's office upheld the denial when The Daily Nebraskan appealed.

Haslett told Konnath to go ahead with the story. She found that the schools saw little problem with their professors' practice of receiving outside pharma money and speaking on the behalf of the companies.