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Up To 1000 NIH Investigators Dropped Out Last Year
sciencehabit writes "New data show that after remaining more or less steady for a decade, the number of investigators with National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding dropped sharply last year by at least 500 researchers and as many as 1000. Although not a big surprise—it came the same year that NIH's budget took a 5% cut—the decline suggests that a long-anticipated contraction in the number of labs supported by NIH may have finally begun."
I want fewer incompetent researchers churning out bullshit papers, and more practicing doctors instead.
And where do you think practicing doctors get their knowledge? That's assuming they keep up with current research, of course.
The thing that makes me cringe is when I hear from physicians, "well, in my experience..." On occasion, they happen to be right and other times, well ....
Physicians are human and are subject to the same bias and irrational thinking as the rest of us. Nothing can replace a well designed study where the results can be reproduced.
And the nice thing about the NIH, they fund studies that have no commercial value (at least in the short term) that add to our knowledge.
Some "stupid" study may reveal something that can be used later or spur someone with an idea of their own.
This mentality of focusing on short term ROI has destroyed our innovation in the US. The last really innovative thing that came out of this country was the Internet and the roots for that were laid down in the 70s.
It's really sad.
"Dropped Out" implies it was the decision of the researchers to quit.
Instead it was the decision of the NIH to quit funding them.
Without something to anchor your 500-1000 number, who will know how outraged they need to be?
And without knowing what those investigators were doing neither number is particularly useful. That's 1000 investigators and their entire lab staff most of them being scientists doing useful research not administrators etc. Unfortunately this doesn't just affect the current generation of scientists, it affects the next generation too. Not all of these labs will close, but there will certainly be a lot less capacity to take students and post docs. How this will impact research is pretty hard to predict, unfortunately it looks a bit more like the blunderbuss approach than the precision cull of the herd with a rifle and scope.
You and I must be reading different journals.
Perspective: Asia's Ascent — Global Trends in Biomedical R&D Expenditures
January 2, 2014
N Engl J Med 2014; 370:3-6
Owing to cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011, the NIH budget for fiscal year 2013 was reduced by $1.7 billion, to $29.2 billion — a 5.5% reduction that continued a trend of declining federal funding for biomedical research that began in 2003.2
Our analysis reveals that U.S. inflation-adjusted R&D expenditures and the U.S. share of global expenditures decreased from 2007 through 2012. The decline is remarkable because the United States has provided a majority of the funding for biomedical R&D globally for the past two decades — a share that some previous analyses suggested was as high as 70 to 80%.2 Moreover, the decline was driven almost entirely by reduced investment by industry, not the public sector, between 2007 and 2012. Sequestration of NIH funding in 2013 and beyond will exacerbate this reduction by causing U.S. public-sector expenditures to decline.
Although our data set has its limitations, our findings reveal a decline in U.S. financial competitiveness in biomedical R&D and may have implications for the debate over appropriate federal policy in this area. The lack of a coordinated national biomedical R&D strategy is disappointing, at a time when mature economies such as those of Japan and Europe have maintained their level of investment in this area.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/ar...
Funding of US biomedical research, 2003-2008.
JAMA. 2010 Jan 13;303(2):137-43. doi: 10.1001/jama.2009.1987.
Funding of US biomedical research, 2003-2008.
CONCLUSION: After a decade of doubling, the rate of increase in biomedical research funding slowed from 2003 to 2007, and after adjustment for inflation, the absolute level of funding from the National Institutes of Health and industry appears to have decreased by 2% in 2008.