Four Science Leaders Speak Out on How US Biomedical Research Can Survive Hard Times;
“Rescuing U.S. Biomedical Research From Its Systemic Flaws”
A recent article by Sam Stein on Huff Post sums it up pretty well, the US is suffering from a brain drain. Where once the best came here and became Americans, now the American scientific enterprise is losing even our own American young people.
The four authors of this important paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences are great leaders who have contributed not only as scientists but as scientific statesmen, leaving the NIH , the National Academy of Sciences, and Princeton. They address the need to reform the way science in the US is supported.
This is a political problem. When he became President, Barack Obama made the decision to appoint Francis Collins as director of the NIH . This was a controversial decision because Dr. Collins, well-known for his organizational work in the Human Genome Project and for his work as a population geneticist, is seen by scientists more as an organizer and a political figure whose beliefs may reassure the religious right. Dr. Collins’ unique ability to speak to the Congress as both a scientist and observant Christian must have figured into the president’s choice. Frankly, Dr. Collins lacks the stature to speak for the scientific community. Affecting Congress requires a rare combination of personal achievement in the lab as recognized by ones’ peers as well as public leadership. .
The problem is that the wonderful biological enterprise has been built with little evidence of long-term planning . Funding, almost always from the federal government, has been achieved under the mantra of improving public health . While there is great celebration of advances in the prevention of atherosclerosis or even the cure of certain cancers, as each celebration passes, the need for an underlying, ongoing commitment by the Congress gets lost. Despite bipartisan support, long term commitment needed to maintain the enterprise is lost in the swings and sways of focus on specific disease targets.
Bruce Albertsa Marc W. Kirschnerb Shirley Tilghmanc,1 and Harold Varmusd offer eight very simple recommendations:
- Emphasize the need for Congress to write and adhere to a five-year budget plan for the NIH.
- Hold down the growth in biomedical graduate students by funding them with training grants and fellowships rather than research grants, make foreigners eligible for training grants, and encourage nonresearch careers for such students by giving them a broader educational base.
- Limit the number of postdoctoral fellows by raising their average pay to the level of staff scientists and limiting their length of eligibility under federal grants, while also creating better career incentives for staff scientists.
- In awarding federal grants, put greater emphasis on the quality of the scientists than the details of a particular project (the Howard Hughes Medical Institute model), emphasize originality and risk-taking (as with the NIH’s New Innovator Award), and more carefully review past work for quality and impact while decreasing reliance on journal-publication statistics, with criteria adjusted to benefit younger researchers.
- Continue the NIH’s recent effort to limit new awards to labs that already have large levels of grant support, and build sunset provisions into large-scale research projects.
- Improve grant-review systems by requiring service on review panels as a condition of grant awards, and encourage participation from outside the direct field as much as possible.
- Revise policies on indirect costs that have encouraged universities to overbuild, including rules that allow full reimbursement to amortize loans for new buildings, the payment of indirect costs on faculty salaries, and the hiring of faculty fully supported by research grants.
- Encourage and enable outside reviews of the effectiveness of programs.
“Two weeks ago, there was a rare legislative breakthrough to authorize $120 million for pediatric research at the NIH over the next decade. And last week, a bipartisan group of House members (25 Republicans in total) wrote congressional appropriators requesting that money for the NIH be set at a minimum of $32 billion for the 2015 fiscal year. It currently stands at $29.934 billion.
“We feel this amount is the minimum level of funding needed to reflect the rising costs associated with biomedical research,” the letter reads. “At a time of unprecedented scientific opportunity, it is critical that the United States make forward-thinking investments that promote medical breakthroughs as well as our international leadership in biomedical research.”