【 以下文字转载自 Faculty 讨论区 】
发信人: sunnyday (胖头鱼。按斤卖就赚了), 信区: Faculty
标 题: NIGMS 要劫富济贫了
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Mon Jan 5 22:29:34 2015, 美东)
革命了革命了！
今天收到NIGMS director 的公开信，里面明白着说单个实验室不应该拿到超过三个R01
（除非是clinical research), 并明白指出这个动向的原因是：
1。在钱的总数有限的情况下，一个实验室拿到多的钱就会导致另外一个实验室拿到的
钱变少。
2。大实验室对博士后和研究生培养不利，因为导师的注意力被分散了。
3。从统计上来看，大实验室的成果并不和资金成正比
A Shared Responsibility
Dr. Jon LorschPosted by Dr. Jon Lorsch on January 5, 2015
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The doubling of the NIH budget between 1998 and 2003 affected nearly every
part of the biomedical research enterprise. The strategies we use to support
research, the manner in which scientists conduct research, the ways in
which researchers are evaluated and rewarded, and the organization of
research institutions were all influenced by the large, sustained increases
in funding during the doubling period.
Despite the fact that the budget doubling ended more than a decade ago, the
biomedical research enterprise has not re-equilibrated to function optimally
under the current circumstances. As has been pointed out by others (e.g.,
Ioannidis, 2011; Vale, 2012; Bourne, 2013; Alberts et al., 2014), the old
models for supporting, evaluating, rewarding and organizing research are not
well suited to today’s realities. Talented and productive investigators at
all levels are struggling to keep their labs open (see Figure 1 below,
Figure 3 in my previous post on factors affecting success rates and Figure 3
in Sally Rockey’s 2012 post on application numbers). Trainees are
apprehensive about pursuing careers in research (Polka and Krukenberg, 2014)
. Study sections are discouraged by the fact that most of the excellent
applications they review won’t be funded and by the difficulty of trying to
prioritize among them. And the nation’s academic institutions and funding
agencies struggle to find new financial models to continue to support
research and graduate education. If we do not retool the system to become
more efficient and sustainable, we will be doing a disservice to the country
by depriving it of scientific advances that would have led to improvements
in health and prosperity.
Re-optimizing the biomedical research enterprise will require significant
changes in every part of the system. For example, despite prescient, early
warnings from Bruce Alberts (1985) about the dangers of confusing the number
of grants and the size of one’s research group with success, large labs
and big budgets have come to be viewed by many researchers and institutions
as key indicators of scientific achievement. However, when basic research
labs get too big it creates a number of inefficiencies. Much of the problem
is one of bandwidth: One person can effectively supervise, mentor and train
a limited number of people. Furthermore, the larger a lab gets, the more
time the principal investigator must devote to writing grants and performing
administrative tasks, further reducing the time available for actually
doing science.
Although certain kinds of research projects—particularly those with an
applied outcome, such as clinical trials—can require large teams, a 2010
analysis by NIGMS and a number of subsequent studies of other funding
systems (Fortin and Currie, 2013; Gallo et al., 2014) have shown that, on
average, large budgets do not give us the best returns on our investments in
basic science. In addition, because it is impossible to know in advance
where the next breakthroughs will arise, having a broad and diverse research
portfolio should maximize the number of important discoveries that emerge
from the science we support (Lauer, 2014).
These and other lines of evidence indicate that funding smaller, more
efficient research groups will increase the net impact of fundamental
biomedical research: valuable scientific output per taxpayer dollar invested
. But to achieve this increase, we must all be willing to share the
responsibility and focus on efficiency as much as we have always focused on
efficacy. In the current zero-sum funding environment, the tradeoffs are
stark: If one investigator gets a third R01, it means that another
productive scientist loses his only grant or a promising new investigator
can’t get her lab off the ground. Which outcome should we choose?
My main motivation for writing this post is to ask the biomedical research
community to think carefully about these issues. Researchers should ask: Can
I do my work more efficiently? What size does my lab need to be? How much
funding do I really need? How do I define success? What can I do to help the
research enterprise thrive?
Academic institutions should ask: How should we evaluate, reward and support
researchers? What changes can we make to enhance the efficiency and
sustainability of the research enterprise?
And journals, professional societies and private funding organizations
should examine the roles they can play in helping to rewire the unproductive
incentive systems that encourage researchers to focus on getting more
funding than they actually need.
We at NIGMS are working hard to find ways to address the challenges
currently facing fundamental biomedical research. As just one example, our
MIRA program aims to create a more efficient, stable, flexible and
productive research funding mechanism. If it is successful, the program
could become the Institute’s primary means of funding individual
investigators and could help transform how we support fundamental biomedical
research. But reshaping the system will require everyone involved to share
the responsibility. We owe it to the next generation of researchers and to
the American public.
