Although the NIH budget will
go up slightly this year, inflation plus years of stagnant funding is culling
more and more good scientists. Funding percentiles remain in the 10% range and
the total number of investigator-initiated grants is going down and down (1).
The NIH and the academic institutions it supports need to face up to what is
clearly a permanently altered funding landscape and go into a salvage mode. In
order to maintain the viability of US biomedical science two things need to be
given priority.
First, truly talented young
scientists must be given every advantage. The NIH currently does provide a
small ‘edge’ for first time awardees. However, this does not persist after the
first funded grant and thus the duration is really not long enough for a young
investigator to get a career going.
Second, highly skilled
mature investigators need some stability so that one failed grant application
does not imperil their careers.
The US (particularly the NIH)
is unique in the world in that science funding is judged and awarded almost
purely on the content of individual grants with only limited consideration of
the career development path of the applicant. In these days of sub 10% funding,
a single reviewer who has a minor technical quibble about a proposal can
torpedo the grant and possibly also the applicant’s career. In many other countries more weight is given
to the long-term accomplishments of senior investigators and to the promise of
junior investigators. Incorporating considerations of career development in
grant review would work toward preservation of human potential in science. Clearly
there is a danger of elitism here, but high quality science is inherently an
elite activity and surely an appropriate degree of fairness can be built into
the process.
Another needed change is
that US academic institutions must get their hands out of the cookie jar of
indirect costs returns. Sure it costs money to provide facilities for
researchers, but universities have charged and over charged for those
facilities and have diverted massive amounts of indirect costs from grants to
totally inappropriate expenses including university golf courses, parking
decks, bus systems and fancy digs for administrators. That money needs to be
used to directly support science!
Finally, universities need
to exhibit restraint both in the hiring of new science faculty and in the
training of students. We are producing far more science PhDs than can possibly
find productive careers in this time of diminished funding in academia and the
wholesale evisceration of basic research in the pharmaceutical industry.