Reply from Paul Smaglik

Paul Smaglik — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:51:03 -0000

The drumbeat for more support of early-career scientists and those pursuing high-risk lines of research continues with a report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The US National Academy of Sciences, which references the report, issued its own concerns about the increased difficulty of landing grants and achieving independence. Now, there’s some sign funders are taking notice. The UK’s Royal Society has proposed an early career stage funding scheme) and the US’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute has launched both an early careers program
and a high-risk research program).
Any other similar schemes out there? Should there be? Let us know.

Reply from Paul Smaglik

Paul Smaglik — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:12:28 -0000

T.S. Elliot called April “the cruelest month” in his classic poem ‘The Waste Land’
But March 2008 was full of harsh foreboding—especially for young scientists striving for independent-research status. I wrote a Prospect
about how success rates for US National Institutes of Health R01 grants fell from 26% in 2000 to 19% in 2007. Meanwhile, the average age of a first-time R01 climbed from the mid-30s in 1980 to a high of 42 now. Then, Nature investigated the phenomenon of ‘grandee grantees’—a pool of 200 established investigators who were supported by six or more grants each. Naturejobs followed that up with a Prospect pondering whether NIH should share the wealth (or the shortage of wealth, since the agency’s budget has been relatively flat the past several years) or continue on the same course. Funneling more money exclusively to young investigators runs the risk of being labeled “need-based” funding rather than the tradition of “merit-based”. That argument has some traction. While covering NIH policy, I’ve heard several members of Congress ask for more money for research in their states—even though they haven’t mustered the research firepower of say, California or Boston; that argument always made me uncomfortable; I believe a fair peer-review grant system is the best way to distirbute funds to themost deserving science. Having said that, one must wonder how some senior investigators are six, or ten or 22 times more deserving of merit than promising young investigators. Without their own R01s, these investigators face either perpetual postdocs or the prospect of running underfunded labs—which makes it that much harder for them to generate the data they need to finally bag an R-01. I’m not sure what the solution is—or the extent of the problem, as seen by the young investigators. Please let me know if you are the victim of what appears to be an imbalance in the system—or if you have suggestions on how to either fix it (beyond an unprecedented NIH budgetary boost) or deal with it.

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Reply from Paul Smaglik

Reply from Paul Smaglik