Post by skyship on May 29, 2014 2:03:21 GMT -5
I think instead of rescuing them, we need to hold them accountable.
Note the affiliations:
Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws
Bruce Albertsa,
Marc W. Kirschnerb,
Shirley Tilghmanc,1, and
Harold Varmusd
Author Affiliations
aDepartment of Biophysics and Biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158;
bDepartment of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115;
cDepartment of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540; and
dNational Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892
Edited by Inder M. Verma, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, and approved March 18, 2014 (received for review March 7, 2014)
The long-held but erroneous assumption of never-ending rapid growth in biomedical science has created an unsustainable hypercompetitive system that is discouraging even the most outstanding prospective students from entering our profession—and making it difficult for seasoned investigators to produce their best work. This is a recipe for long-term decline, and the problems cannot be solved with simplistic approaches. Instead, it is time to confront the dangers at hand and rethink some fundamental features of the US biomedical research ecosystem.
graduate education
postdoctoral education
federal funding
peer review
www.pnas.org/content/111/16/5773.full
It was all about competition. What have they actually acomplished?
Note the affiliations:
Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws
Bruce Albertsa,
Marc W. Kirschnerb,
Shirley Tilghmanc,1, and
Harold Varmusd
Author Affiliations
aDepartment of Biophysics and Biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158;
bDepartment of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115;
cDepartment of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540; and
dNational Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892
Edited by Inder M. Verma, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, and approved March 18, 2014 (received for review March 7, 2014)
The long-held but erroneous assumption of never-ending rapid growth in biomedical science has created an unsustainable hypercompetitive system that is discouraging even the most outstanding prospective students from entering our profession—and making it difficult for seasoned investigators to produce their best work. This is a recipe for long-term decline, and the problems cannot be solved with simplistic approaches. Instead, it is time to confront the dangers at hand and rethink some fundamental features of the US biomedical research ecosystem.
graduate education
postdoctoral education
federal funding
peer review
In the context of such progress, it is remarkable that even the most successful scientists and most promising trainees are increasingly pessimistic about the future of their chosen career. Based on extensive observations and discussions, we believe that these concerns are justified and that the biomedical research enterprise in the United States is on an unsustainable path. In this article, we describe how this situation arose and propose some possible remedies.
Previous SectionNext Section
Source of the Dilemma
We believe that the root cause of the widespread malaise is a longstanding assumption that the biomedical research system in the United States will expand indefinitely at a substantial rate. We are now faced with the stark realization that this is not the case. Over the last decade, the expansion has stalled and even reversed.
The idea that the research enterprise would expand forever was adopted after World War II, as the numbers and sizes of universities grew to meet the economy’s need for more graduates and as the tenets of Vannevar Bush’s “Science: The Endless Frontier” encouraged the expansion of federal budgets for research (1). Growth persisted with the coming of age of the baby boom generation in the late 1960s and 1970s and a vibrant US economy.
However, eventually, beginning around 1990 and worsening after 2003, when a rapid doubling of the NIH budget ended, the demands for research dollars grew much faster than the supply. The demands were fueled in large part by incentives for institutional expansion, by the rapid growth of the scientific workforce, and by rising costs of research. Further slowdowns in federal funding, caused by the Great Recession of 2008 and by the budget sequestration that followed in 2013, have significantly exacerbated the problem. (Today, the resources available to the NIH are estimated to be at least 25% less in constant dollars than they were in 2003.) The consequences of this imbalance include dramatic declines in success rates for NIH grant applicants and diminished time for scientists to think and perform productive work.
The mismatch between supply and demand can be partly laid at the feet of the discipline’s Malthusian traditions. The great majority of biomedical research is conducted by aspiring trainees: by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. As a result, most successful biomedical scientists train far more scientists than are needed to replace him- or herself; in the aggregate, the training pipeline produces more scientists than relevant positions in academia, government, and the private sector are capable of absorbing. Consequently a growing number of PhDs are in jobs that do not take advantage of the taxpayers’ investment in their lengthy education (2). Fundamentally, the current system is in perpetual disequilibrium, because it will inevitably generate an ever-increasing supply of scientists vying for a finite set of research resources and employment opportunities. The resulting strains have diminished the attraction of our profession for many scientists—novice and experienced alike.
Previous SectionNext Section
Damaging Effects of Hypercompetition
Competition in pursuit of experimental objectives has always been a part of the scientific enterprise, and it can have positive effects. However, hypercompetition for the resources and positions that are required to conduct science suppresses the creativity, cooperation, risk-taking, and original thinking required to make fundamental discoveries.
Now that the percentage of NIH grant applications that can be funded has fallen from around 30% into the low teens, biomedical scientists are spending far too much of their time writing and revising grant applications and far too little thinking about science and conducting experiments. The low success rates have induced conservative, short-term thinking in applicants, reviewers, and funders. The system now favors those who can guarantee results rather than those with potentially path-breaking ideas that, by definition, cannot promise success. Young investigators are discouraged from departing too far from their postdoctoral work, when they should instead be posing new questions and inventing new approaches. Seasoned investigators are inclined to stick to their tried-and-true formulas for success rather than explore new fields.
One manifestation of this shift to short-term thinking is the inflated value that is now accorded to studies that claim a close link to medical practice. Human biology has always been a central part of the US biomedical effort. However, only recently has the term “translational research” been widely, if unofficially, used as a criterion for evaluation. Overvaluing translational research is detracting from an equivalent appreciation of fundamental research of broad applicability, without obvious connections to medicine. Many surprising discoveries, powerful research tools, and important medical benefits have arisen from efforts to decipher complex biological phenomena in model organisms. In a climate that discourages such work by emphasizing short-term goals, scientific progress will inevitably be slowed, and revolutionary findings will be deferred (3).
Traditional standards for the practice of science are also threatened in this environment. Publishing scientific reports, especially in the most prestigious journals, has become increasingly difficult, as competition increases and reviewers and editors demand more and more from each paper. Long appendixes that contain the bulk of the experimental results have become the norm for many journals and accepted practice for most scientists. As competition for jobs and promotions increases, the inflated value given to publishing in a small number of so-called “high impact” journals has put pressure on authors to rush into print, cut corners, exaggerate their findings, and overstate the significance of their work. Such publication practices, abetted by the hypercompetitive grant system and job market, are changing the atmosphere in many laboratories in disturbing ways. The recent worrisome reports of substantial numbers of research publications whose results cannot be replicated are likely symptoms of today's highly pressured environment for research (4⇓–6). If through sloppiness, error, or exaggeration, the scientific community loses the public’s trust in the integrity of its work, it cannot expect to maintain public support for science.
Previous SectionNext Section
Crippling Demands on a Scientist's Time
The development of original ideas that lead to important scientific discoveries takes time for thinking, reading, and talking with peers. Today, time for reflection is a disappearing luxury for the scientific community. In addition to writing and revising grant applications and papers, scientists now contend with expanding regulatory requirements and government reporting on issues such as animal welfare, radiation safety, and human subjects protection. Although these are important aspects of running a safe and ethically grounded laboratory, these administrative tasks are taking up an ever-increasing fraction of the day and present serious obstacles to concentration on the scientific mission itself.
Time pressures are also affecting the quality of peer review, an essential element of a healthy ecosystem for science. Investigators often lack the time to review manuscripts for journals, leaving these tasks to their students and fellows who may lack the experience needed to appreciate the broader context of the work and the provisional nature of truly original findings. Professional editors are increasingly serving in roles played in the past by working scientists and can undermine the enterprise when they base judgments about publication on newsworthiness rather than scientific quality.
The peer review of applications for research grants has also been affected. Historically, study sections that review applications were composed largely of highly respected leaders in the field, and there was widespread trust in the fairness of the system. Today it is less common for senior scientists to serve. Either they are not asked or, when asked, it is more difficult to persuade them to participate because of very low success rates, difficulties of choosing among highly meritorious proposals, and the perception that the quality of evaluation has declined.
Previous SectionNext Section
Supporting the Next Generation of Scientists
There is a no more worrisome consequence of the hypercompetitive culture of biomedical science than the pall it is casting on early careers of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young investigators. A recent study commissioned by NIH Director Francis Collins documented the rapid growth in the number of biomedical PhDs and postdoctoral fellows trained in the United States, driven most recently by the doubling of the NIH budget that ended a decade ago (2). As those trainees complete their studies, they have come face to face with slowdowns or contractions in the employment sectors—academia, government, and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries—that could and should benefit from their long years of training. This has led to an extended occupancy of training positions, coupled to greatly increased expectations from prospective employers for prior productivity.
Even after they have landed a research position in academia or research institutes, new investigators wait an average of 4–5 y to receive federal funding for their work compared with 1 y in 1980 (2). Two stark statistics tell much of the tale—the average age at which PhD recipients assume their first tenure-track job is 37 y, and they are approaching 42 y when they are awarded their first NIH grant. In 1980, 16% of NIH grant recipients were 36 y of age or younger; today that number is 3% (2). It is no surprise that extraordinarily well-trained and successful young scientists are opting out of academic science in greater and greater numbers; not because they find other opportunities so much more attractive, but because they are discouraged by the nature of their future life in academia.
From the early 1990s, every labor economist who has studied the pipeline for the biomedical workforce has proclaimed it to be broken (2, 7⇓⇓⇓⇓–12). However, little has been done to reform the system, primarily because it continues to benefit more established and hence more influential scientists and because it has undoubtedly produced great science. Economists point out that many labor markets experience expansions and contractions, but biomedical science does not respond to classic market forces. As the demographer Michael Teitelbaum has observed (9), lower employment prospects for future scientists would normally be expected to lead to a decline in graduate school applicants, as well as to a contraction in the system.
In biomedical research, this does not happen, in part because of a large influx of foreign applicants (2) for whom the prospects in the United States are more attractive than what they face in their own countries, but also because the opportunities for discovering new knowledge and improving human health are inherently so appealing.
Previous SectionNext Section
Perverse Incentives in Research Funding
The assumption that the biomedical research enterprise will expand continuously at a high rate has powerfully motivated the behavior of large academic medical centers (7⇓–9). Salaries paid by grants are subject to indirect cost reimbursement, creating a strong incentive for universities to enlarge their faculties by seeking as much faculty salary support as possible on government grants. This has led to an enormous growth in “soft money” positions, with stagnation in the ranks of faculty who have institutional support. The government is also indirectly paying for the new buildings to house these scientists by allowing debt service on new construction to be included in its calculations of indirect cost recovery.
These are perverse incentives because they encourage grantee institutions to grow without making sufficient investments in their own faculty and facilities. As a result, thousands of US faculty members now compete intensely not only for research funds but also for their own salaries within a shrinking pool of dollars.
Previous SectionNext Section
Source of the Dilemma
We believe that the root cause of the widespread malaise is a longstanding assumption that the biomedical research system in the United States will expand indefinitely at a substantial rate. We are now faced with the stark realization that this is not the case. Over the last decade, the expansion has stalled and even reversed.
The idea that the research enterprise would expand forever was adopted after World War II, as the numbers and sizes of universities grew to meet the economy’s need for more graduates and as the tenets of Vannevar Bush’s “Science: The Endless Frontier” encouraged the expansion of federal budgets for research (1). Growth persisted with the coming of age of the baby boom generation in the late 1960s and 1970s and a vibrant US economy.
However, eventually, beginning around 1990 and worsening after 2003, when a rapid doubling of the NIH budget ended, the demands for research dollars grew much faster than the supply. The demands were fueled in large part by incentives for institutional expansion, by the rapid growth of the scientific workforce, and by rising costs of research. Further slowdowns in federal funding, caused by the Great Recession of 2008 and by the budget sequestration that followed in 2013, have significantly exacerbated the problem. (Today, the resources available to the NIH are estimated to be at least 25% less in constant dollars than they were in 2003.) The consequences of this imbalance include dramatic declines in success rates for NIH grant applicants and diminished time for scientists to think and perform productive work.
The mismatch between supply and demand can be partly laid at the feet of the discipline’s Malthusian traditions. The great majority of biomedical research is conducted by aspiring trainees: by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. As a result, most successful biomedical scientists train far more scientists than are needed to replace him- or herself; in the aggregate, the training pipeline produces more scientists than relevant positions in academia, government, and the private sector are capable of absorbing. Consequently a growing number of PhDs are in jobs that do not take advantage of the taxpayers’ investment in their lengthy education (2). Fundamentally, the current system is in perpetual disequilibrium, because it will inevitably generate an ever-increasing supply of scientists vying for a finite set of research resources and employment opportunities. The resulting strains have diminished the attraction of our profession for many scientists—novice and experienced alike.
Previous SectionNext Section
Damaging Effects of Hypercompetition
Competition in pursuit of experimental objectives has always been a part of the scientific enterprise, and it can have positive effects. However, hypercompetition for the resources and positions that are required to conduct science suppresses the creativity, cooperation, risk-taking, and original thinking required to make fundamental discoveries.
Now that the percentage of NIH grant applications that can be funded has fallen from around 30% into the low teens, biomedical scientists are spending far too much of their time writing and revising grant applications and far too little thinking about science and conducting experiments. The low success rates have induced conservative, short-term thinking in applicants, reviewers, and funders. The system now favors those who can guarantee results rather than those with potentially path-breaking ideas that, by definition, cannot promise success. Young investigators are discouraged from departing too far from their postdoctoral work, when they should instead be posing new questions and inventing new approaches. Seasoned investigators are inclined to stick to their tried-and-true formulas for success rather than explore new fields.
One manifestation of this shift to short-term thinking is the inflated value that is now accorded to studies that claim a close link to medical practice. Human biology has always been a central part of the US biomedical effort. However, only recently has the term “translational research” been widely, if unofficially, used as a criterion for evaluation. Overvaluing translational research is detracting from an equivalent appreciation of fundamental research of broad applicability, without obvious connections to medicine. Many surprising discoveries, powerful research tools, and important medical benefits have arisen from efforts to decipher complex biological phenomena in model organisms. In a climate that discourages such work by emphasizing short-term goals, scientific progress will inevitably be slowed, and revolutionary findings will be deferred (3).
Traditional standards for the practice of science are also threatened in this environment. Publishing scientific reports, especially in the most prestigious journals, has become increasingly difficult, as competition increases and reviewers and editors demand more and more from each paper. Long appendixes that contain the bulk of the experimental results have become the norm for many journals and accepted practice for most scientists. As competition for jobs and promotions increases, the inflated value given to publishing in a small number of so-called “high impact” journals has put pressure on authors to rush into print, cut corners, exaggerate their findings, and overstate the significance of their work. Such publication practices, abetted by the hypercompetitive grant system and job market, are changing the atmosphere in many laboratories in disturbing ways. The recent worrisome reports of substantial numbers of research publications whose results cannot be replicated are likely symptoms of today's highly pressured environment for research (4⇓–6). If through sloppiness, error, or exaggeration, the scientific community loses the public’s trust in the integrity of its work, it cannot expect to maintain public support for science.
Previous SectionNext Section
Crippling Demands on a Scientist's Time
The development of original ideas that lead to important scientific discoveries takes time for thinking, reading, and talking with peers. Today, time for reflection is a disappearing luxury for the scientific community. In addition to writing and revising grant applications and papers, scientists now contend with expanding regulatory requirements and government reporting on issues such as animal welfare, radiation safety, and human subjects protection. Although these are important aspects of running a safe and ethically grounded laboratory, these administrative tasks are taking up an ever-increasing fraction of the day and present serious obstacles to concentration on the scientific mission itself.
Time pressures are also affecting the quality of peer review, an essential element of a healthy ecosystem for science. Investigators often lack the time to review manuscripts for journals, leaving these tasks to their students and fellows who may lack the experience needed to appreciate the broader context of the work and the provisional nature of truly original findings. Professional editors are increasingly serving in roles played in the past by working scientists and can undermine the enterprise when they base judgments about publication on newsworthiness rather than scientific quality.
The peer review of applications for research grants has also been affected. Historically, study sections that review applications were composed largely of highly respected leaders in the field, and there was widespread trust in the fairness of the system. Today it is less common for senior scientists to serve. Either they are not asked or, when asked, it is more difficult to persuade them to participate because of very low success rates, difficulties of choosing among highly meritorious proposals, and the perception that the quality of evaluation has declined.
Previous SectionNext Section
Supporting the Next Generation of Scientists
There is a no more worrisome consequence of the hypercompetitive culture of biomedical science than the pall it is casting on early careers of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young investigators. A recent study commissioned by NIH Director Francis Collins documented the rapid growth in the number of biomedical PhDs and postdoctoral fellows trained in the United States, driven most recently by the doubling of the NIH budget that ended a decade ago (2). As those trainees complete their studies, they have come face to face with slowdowns or contractions in the employment sectors—academia, government, and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries—that could and should benefit from their long years of training. This has led to an extended occupancy of training positions, coupled to greatly increased expectations from prospective employers for prior productivity.
Even after they have landed a research position in academia or research institutes, new investigators wait an average of 4–5 y to receive federal funding for their work compared with 1 y in 1980 (2). Two stark statistics tell much of the tale—the average age at which PhD recipients assume their first tenure-track job is 37 y, and they are approaching 42 y when they are awarded their first NIH grant. In 1980, 16% of NIH grant recipients were 36 y of age or younger; today that number is 3% (2). It is no surprise that extraordinarily well-trained and successful young scientists are opting out of academic science in greater and greater numbers; not because they find other opportunities so much more attractive, but because they are discouraged by the nature of their future life in academia.
From the early 1990s, every labor economist who has studied the pipeline for the biomedical workforce has proclaimed it to be broken (2, 7⇓⇓⇓⇓–12). However, little has been done to reform the system, primarily because it continues to benefit more established and hence more influential scientists and because it has undoubtedly produced great science. Economists point out that many labor markets experience expansions and contractions, but biomedical science does not respond to classic market forces. As the demographer Michael Teitelbaum has observed (9), lower employment prospects for future scientists would normally be expected to lead to a decline in graduate school applicants, as well as to a contraction in the system.
In biomedical research, this does not happen, in part because of a large influx of foreign applicants (2) for whom the prospects in the United States are more attractive than what they face in their own countries, but also because the opportunities for discovering new knowledge and improving human health are inherently so appealing.
Previous SectionNext Section
Perverse Incentives in Research Funding
The assumption that the biomedical research enterprise will expand continuously at a high rate has powerfully motivated the behavior of large academic medical centers (7⇓–9). Salaries paid by grants are subject to indirect cost reimbursement, creating a strong incentive for universities to enlarge their faculties by seeking as much faculty salary support as possible on government grants. This has led to an enormous growth in “soft money” positions, with stagnation in the ranks of faculty who have institutional support. The government is also indirectly paying for the new buildings to house these scientists by allowing debt service on new construction to be included in its calculations of indirect cost recovery.
These are perverse incentives because they encourage grantee institutions to grow without making sufficient investments in their own faculty and facilities. As a result, thousands of US faculty members now compete intensely not only for research funds but also for their own salaries within a shrinking pool of dollars.
www.pnas.org/content/111/16/5773.full
It was all about competition. What have they actually acomplished?