NIH Budget Cuts

[Anonymous]

Research should be in the private sector

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funding for research grants from most of the NIH institutes is down to 5-10% of grants submitted. Many highly talented researchers with the potential to contribute major advances to science are already closing their research labs and finding new careers. Others who have been able to hold on are spending an inordinate amount of time perfecting their already outstanding grant applications to get into the funding range. This results in significant slowing down of their research programs.

Science and technical advancement in the US will soon be eclipsed by research in other countries (e.g. China) where funding is more generous. The US is loosing the competitive edge and any further reduction in the NIH budget will make this happen even faster.

and yet... so much research turns out to be garbage. cancer research using compromised cell lines. decades of research in social psychology crumbling before our eyes, neuroscience research widely inflated using incorrect statistics... and that's just stuff that has been checked.

Are you a scientist?

yes

Then you should know better that plenty of worthwhile research gets done through the NIH. Anyone can cherry-pick wasteful examples in each field. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the solution?

http://www.nature.com/news/the-pressure-to-publish-pushes-down-quality-1.19887?WT.mc_id=FBK_NA_1605_NEWSWVPRESSURETOPUBLISH_PORTFOLIO

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funding for research grants from most of the NIH institutes is down to 5-10% of grants submitted. Many highly talented researchers with the potential to contribute major advances to science are already closing their research labs and finding new careers. Others who have been able to hold on are spending an inordinate amount of time perfecting their already outstanding grant applications to get into the funding range. This results in significant slowing down of their research programs.

Science and technical advancement in the US will soon be eclipsed by research in other countries (e.g. China) where funding is more generous. The US is loosing the competitive edge and any further reduction in the NIH budget will make this happen even faster.

and yet... so much research turns out to be garbage. cancer research using compromised cell lines. decades of research in social psychology crumbling before our eyes, neuroscience research widely inflated using incorrect statistics... and that's just stuff that has been checked.

Are you a scientist?

yes

Then you should know better that plenty of worthwhile research gets done through the NIH. Anyone can cherry-pick wasteful examples in each field. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the solution?

not saying this is the solution, but to run around like a headless chicken screaming "research! research" is not the solution either.

there clearly exist huge problems in research community - specifically, lack of viable research careers/academic for most phds and way too many bad papers - quantity over quality type. apart from a top 5% research superstars, most researchers are paid laughable wages. likes, nurses and accountants make significantly more money in many cases. in parallel, a great amount of worthless research is being published obscuring what is essential and valuable. the medieval model is not working any more. what is the solution i don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Research should be in the private sector

That's certainly one perspective.

[Anonymous]

Please call Hogan if you live in Maryland. He needs to act to protect Maryland jobs.

[Anonymous]

What about issues with not being able to reproduce data:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/07/scienctific-research-peer-review-reproducing-data
http://www.nature.com/news/reproducibility-1.17552
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/if-you-fail-reproduce-another-scientist-s-results-journal-wants-know

research being done with cell lines that turn out to be from different line of origin than thought:
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/354/354re3
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/08/31/widely-used-brain-tumor-cell-line-may-not-be-what-researchers-thought-it-was/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22987579

and contamination of culture with other cell types:
https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/21/studies-wrong-cells/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Over ten years at NIH and I don't see any fat. Funding was flat for a long time, raises were nonexistent. These are highly specialized scientists dedicating their lives to finding cures for some of the most devastating diseases. Not to mention responding to crises such as Zika, Ebola, and others.
I heard that Trump said he was going to "eliminate all diseases". How is that consistent with a nearly 20% cut at NIH, which includes not just salaries and programs at NIH, but grant funding for scientists around the country?

I am a foreign research scientist and I see a lot of "fat", but it is not limited to NIH, it is prevalent everywhere in the US, in professional as well as private life. You guys are just so rich, you don't even realize how much you're tossing and consuming

I'm French, BTW, I don't come from a developed nation. I first realized this was a first world problem when a fellow researcher from Algeria worked in our Parisian department and commented on how wasteful we were, how we spent funds willy-nilly and didn't realize how lucky we were. Well, after several years of living in the US, I can forward that comment to Americans in general, because there's about the same financial gap!

It starts when Americans are young: the number of pencils consumed annually in one classroom, to pick a simple example. Here kids toss them about, lose them, break them, take a fresh one, etc, without thinking that this might be a precious resource. Same for drawing paper, or other classroom resource that's not electronic (and I'm pretty sure that in a few years, they'll toss their laptops to the floor unthinkingly!). In a research lab, the equivalent example are pipette tips: people lose their tips, it goes into the garbage, they take another one from the box, and think nothing of it, because they're so cheap it doesn't even cross their minds. Except that it should. In Algeria, they reuse those things because they can't afford to continually buy new ones. In France, we have to be conservative, but we do buy new tips as needed.

Not only do people think nothing of consuming great quantities of stuff that they could conserve better, but they are also used to certain luxury standards in their daily life. Houses keep getting larger, leading to more expensive housing, utilities and property taxes. For professional or school building, a certain number of bathrooms per people are set into the regulations, for example, and a certain amount of space per person calculated into the proportions of the rooms, or cubicles or toilet stalls. These things cost money, in total amount of square feet in the finished building and how many prime real estate was bought for the construction. Every building has to have art and green spaces and water fountains. There must be a room with complimentary coffee, refrigerators, microwaves and perhaps dishwashers. Every few years, people feel the need to redecorate the teacher's lounge or meeting space.

I'm not saying that we should do away with these things, and I'm not saying every American lives like this. I'm saying that saving money means doing very nitty-gritty work and shaving off a little bit of funding from every single operation in every single department. And that is usually impossible, because nobody wants to pay a group of people to do this, even thought it would be so much better than eliminating entire agencies who do critical work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about issues with not being able to reproduce data:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/07/scienctific-research-peer-review-reproducing-data
http://www.nature.com/news/reproducibility-1.17552
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/if-you-fail-reproduce-another-scientist-s-results-journal-wants-know

research being done with cell lines that turn out to be from different line of origin than thought:
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/354/354re3
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/08/31/widely-used-brain-tumor-cell-line-may-not-be-what-researchers-thought-it-was/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22987579

and contamination of culture with other cell types:
https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/21/studies-wrong-cells/

The NIH has addressed the issues with cell lines by requiring researchers to authenticate cell lines and other key biological resources.

[Anonymous]

There seems to be tons of fat sitting in the Oval Office, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Research should be in the private sector

Ok - orphan diseases - too bad, not profitable to find a cure - you are out of luck. Vaccines - nope - not profitable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There seems to be tons of fat sitting in the Oval Office, too.

that's true for sure. for example, security seems to be over the top and at the same time not very efficient. there should be fixed budget for security and president should choose what he wants. president should be allowed to waste so much the way trump does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about issues with not being able to reproduce data:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/07/scienctific-research-peer-review-reproducing-data
http://www.nature.com/news/reproducibility-1.17552
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/if-you-fail-reproduce-another-scientist-s-results-journal-wants-know

research being done with cell lines that turn out to be from different line of origin than thought:
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/354/354re3
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/08/31/widely-used-brain-tumor-cell-line-may-not-be-what-researchers-thought-it-was/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22987579

and contamination of culture with other cell types:
https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/21/studies-wrong-cells/

The NIH has addressed the issues with cell lines by requiring researchers to authenticate cell lines and other key biological resources.

but there will be - and already is - so much else. remember "why most research findings are false". a lot of science relies on statistics, yet lot of statistics that is done is actually incorrect. incorrect in terms of mere calculations, tests used etc.

it's the incentive structure is screwed up. people are expected to make scientific discoveries at great pace early in their careers in order to make 50k a year after so many years of schooling. way too many people who are very talented yet no einsteins are chasing very few long-term positions. if they don't catch them, all of their schooling goes to waste, basically. meanwhile people with degrees in nursing make over 100k. this is crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Over ten years at NIH and I don't see any fat. Funding was flat for a long time, raises were nonexistent. These are highly specialized scientists dedicating their lives to finding cures for some of the most devastating diseases. Not to mention responding to crises such as Zika, Ebola, and others.
I heard that Trump said he was going to "eliminate all diseases". How is that consistent with a nearly 20% cut at NIH, which includes not just salaries and programs at NIH, but grant funding for scientists around the country?

I am a foreign research scientist and I see a lot of "fat", but it is not limited to NIH, it is prevalent everywhere in the US, in professional as well as private life. You guys are just so rich, you don't even realize how much you're tossing and consuming

I'm French, BTW, I don't come from a developed nation. I first realized this was a first world problem when a fellow researcher from Algeria worked in our Parisian department and commented on how wasteful we were, how we spent funds willy-nilly and didn't realize how lucky we were. Well, after several years of living in the US, I can forward that comment to Americans in general, because there's about the same financial gap!

It starts when Americans are young: the number of pencils consumed annually in one classroom, to pick a simple example. Here kids toss them about, lose them, break them, take a fresh one, etc, without thinking that this might be a precious resource. Same for drawing paper, or other classroom resource that's not electronic (and I'm pretty sure that in a few years, they'll toss their laptops to the floor unthinkingly!). In a research lab, the equivalent example are pipette tips: people lose their tips, it goes into the garbage, they take another one from the box, and think nothing of it, because they're so cheap it doesn't even cross their minds. Except that it should. In Algeria, they reuse those things because they can't afford to continually buy new ones. In France, we have to be conservative, but we do buy new tips as needed.

Not only do people think nothing of consuming great quantities of stuff that they could conserve better, but they are also used to certain luxury standards in their daily life. Houses keep getting larger, leading to more expensive housing, utilities and property taxes. For professional or school building, a certain number of bathrooms per people are set into the regulations, for example, and a certain amount of space per person calculated into the proportions of the rooms, or cubicles or toilet stalls. These things cost money, in total amount of square feet in the finished building and how many prime real estate was bought for the construction. Every building has to have art and green spaces and water fountains. There must be a room with complimentary coffee, refrigerators, microwaves and perhaps dishwashers. Every few years, people feel the need to redecorate the teacher's lounge or meeting space.

I'm not saying that we should do away with these things, and I'm not saying every American lives like this. I'm saying that saving money means doing very nitty-gritty work and shaving off a little bit of funding from every single operation in every single department. And that is usually impossible, because nobody wants to pay a group of people to do this, even thought it would be so much better than eliminating entire agencies who do critical work.

The thing you have to realize that generally the most expensive thing in America is time and labour. It would cost more to clean, store, and sort those pippettes than would ever be recouped from reusing them. Same with pencils and paper; schools are understaffed and teachers overworked; putting paper and pencils on a quota would save a negligible amount of money but consume a lot of instructional time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Over ten years at NIH and I don't see any fat. Funding was flat for a long time, raises were nonexistent. These are highly specialized scientists dedicating their lives to finding cures for some of the most devastating diseases. Not to mention responding to crises such as Zika, Ebola, and others.
I heard that Trump said he was going to "eliminate all diseases". How is that consistent with a nearly 20% cut at NIH, which includes not just salaries and programs at NIH, but grant funding for scientists around the country?

I am a foreign research scientist and I see a lot of "fat", but it is not limited to NIH, it is prevalent everywhere in the US, in professional as well as private life. You guys are just so rich, you don't even realize how much you're tossing and consuming

I'm French, BTW, I don't come from a developed nation. I first realized this was a first world problem when a fellow researcher from Algeria worked in our Parisian department and commented on how wasteful we were, how we spent funds willy-nilly and didn't realize how lucky we were. Well, after several years of living in the US, I can forward that comment to Americans in general, because there's about the same financial gap!

It starts when Americans are young: the number of pencils consumed annually in one classroom, to pick a simple example. Here kids toss them about, lose them, break them, take a fresh one, etc, without thinking that this might be a precious resource. Same for drawing paper, or other classroom resource that's not electronic (and I'm pretty sure that in a few years, they'll toss their laptops to the floor unthinkingly!). In a research lab, the equivalent example are pipette tips: people lose their tips, it goes into the garbage, they take another one from the box, and think nothing of it, because they're so cheap it doesn't even cross their minds. Except that it should. In Algeria, they reuse those things because they can't afford to continually buy new ones. In France, we have to be conservative, but we do buy new tips as needed.

Not only do people think nothing of consuming great quantities of stuff that they could conserve better, but they are also used to certain luxury standards in their daily life. Houses keep getting larger, leading to more expensive housing, utilities and property taxes. For professional or school building, a certain number of bathrooms per people are set into the regulations, for example, and a certain amount of space per person calculated into the proportions of the rooms, or cubicles or toilet stalls. These things cost money, in total amount of square feet in the finished building and how many prime real estate was bought for the construction. Every building has to have art and green spaces and water fountains. There must be a room with complimentary coffee, refrigerators, microwaves and perhaps dishwashers. Every few years, people feel the need to redecorate the teacher's lounge or meeting space.

I'm not saying that we should do away with these things, and I'm not saying every American lives like this. I'm saying that saving money means doing very nitty-gritty work and shaving off a little bit of funding from every single operation in every single department. And that is usually impossible, because nobody wants to pay a group of people to do this, even thought it would be so much better than eliminating entire agencies who do critical work.

The thing you have to realize that generally the most expensive thing in America is time and labour. It would cost more to clean, store, and sort those pippettes than would ever be recouped from reusing them. Same with pencils and paper; schools are understaffed and teachers overworked; putting paper and pencils on a quota would save a negligible amount of money but consume a lot of instructional time

You missed my point entirely, which is that a deep change in thinking has to occur, in order not to be wasteful. France has strong wage regulations that guarantee good salaries and we still save money by reusing certain items and saving on energy. For example: most homes in America have water heaters that heat water 24/7, whereas in most of the UK and the European continent, home-owners save money by putting their boilers on timers, in order to save energy and money by only heating water when it's needed. We automatically have a conservative frame of mind when using things, whereas here my mind boggles when I see how much is bought, partially consumed and tossed away. When you've live elsewhere, it's scary. We need to teach kids that we need to be aware of our consumption. Ratchet down our expectations in daily life. Did we need that multi-story light-filled lounge on the visitors' side of the NIH clinical center? No, it's always half empty. But it sure is impressive for visitors and you can bet it cost a pretty penny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funding for research grants from most of the NIH institutes is down to 5-10% of grants submitted. Many highly talented researchers with the potential to contribute major advances to science are already closing their research labs and finding new careers. Others who have been able to hold on are spending an inordinate amount of time perfecting their already outstanding grant applications to get into the funding range. This results in significant slowing down of their research programs.

Science and technical advancement in the US will soon be eclipsed by research in other countries (e.g. China) where funding is more generous. The US is loosing the competitive edge and any further reduction in the NIH budget will make this happen even faster.

and yet... so much research turns out to be garbage. cancer research using compromised cell lines. decades of research in social psychology crumbling before our eyes, neuroscience research widely inflated using incorrect statistics... and that's just stuff that has been checked.

Are you a scientist?

yes

Then you should know better that plenty of worthwhile research gets done through the NIH. Anyone can cherry-pick wasteful examples in each field. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the solution?

not saying this is the solution, but to run around like a headless chicken screaming "research! research" is not the solution either.

there clearly exist huge problems in research community - specifically, lack of viable research careers/academic for most phds and way too many bad papers - quantity over quality type. apart from a top 5% research superstars, most researchers are paid laughable wages. likes, nurses and accountants make significantly more money in many cases. in parallel, a great amount of worthless research is being published obscuring what is essential and valuable. the medieval model is not working any more. what is the solution i don't know.

Well you ladies have effectively convinced me to take the S out of STEM when encouraging my kid about potential school and career choices.