Henry Borne
some opening thoughts
- If we just had more money everything would be fine
- during the time we did have money we made the problems which exist today (in low funding)
In the twentieth century,
- ‘Science was more fun than anything else a person can do with clothes on’.
- Youth rewarded, expansion of science, expansion of funding.
Twenty-first century
- Still have beautiful question, powerful tools and imaginative smart scientists
- Unstainable (even if resources were stable). Hypercompetition corrodes values
- Shift away from basic and PI-initated research
- widespread resistance to change
- weak public and federal support.
- Congress used to be unthinking and feckless but in our favor, now it’s against us.
Scientists aren’t socially-political active by nature today.
some issues
- the purpose of graduate school is to produce postdocs
- the purpose of postdocs is do work for a PI.
Tractable problems
- Trainees = workforce (problem: more trainees than we can place)
- soft-money salaries
- indirect cost rules
- peer review and grant awards
- science publishing
Things structured in a way that was good for science back in the day and is still good for some people but create a lot of problems for a lot of people today.
Difference from Alberts et al. – solution lies from the top just at NIH
NIH needs pressure from PIs and the community
Ideas for change
- Training (quality) should be peer reviewed
- Funding mechanism for training vs. research should be different? *
- Change will affect the size and composition of research labs.
More Ideas for change
- Experiments;
- Fund PIs not Projects?
- Limit length of PhD training periods?
- Are universities incentivised to support larger labs (size matters more than productivity, marginal returns doesn’t matter).
- Your average dean doesn’t understand where the money comes from and where it goes (some do). Know where the money comes from.
- Big industry / big pharma needs government funded (free) academic research
- Evaluation based on “SIZE” of research program is a problem.
National Postdoc association founded in 2000 following first report of the committee on science engineering and public policy. Report highlighted that a rapid expansion had taken place without adequate oversight, resulting in fundamental changes in the nautre of the experience.
Metrics:
- attrition rates? graduation rates? time to degree?
- publication rates? attainment of academic positions? other positions?
Galit Lahav ‘how to train your PI’ HMS
- Most PIs train far more scientists than are needed in academia.
- PIs are not getting training in mentoring students for non-academic jobs.
- PhD programs that require students to spend a semester working in industry. (many PIs are not okay with this).
- Every PI (as of today) is required to document career discussions with trainees.
Nobel Laureate CEO research at NEB and co founder
- NIH doesn’t spend money very well – favors older scientists. Young people do most of the good work. Most Nobels have done their work before 40. Often before 33.
- NEB aims at providing support for (internal?) basic research
David Glass fron Novartis, also faculty at Harvard CCB, funded from Novartis not NIH.
- Novartis runs a postdoc program
- original program, many postdocs come for a year or so but don’t publish — being used as a job training / came for the money?
- Big drug companies check on the extreme claims in major journals. Most of these claims are false (not reproducible) just wrong. not helpful for pharmacutical research.
A random thought: Banks train more junior bankers than senior partners? Is it really a problem
Questions:
- If graduate schools published metrics, would that affect student recruitment? Change incentives?
- Can we pull these data without the cooperation of the university? (e.g. publications? publication rates per graduate student?)
- Have labs gotten larger? Will they continue to get larger?
- what fraction of NIH spending is going to super-funded PIs?
- “specific productivity” divide productivity from the number
Observation:
- some post-docs at least are looking for a outlet for a voice, (even if only to complain about salaries)
Mark Kirschner
How much money should we spend on biomedical research? Ask the average American, it’s something like 1 in 10 dollars. We spend way less on NIH.
The future lab is not so big but more collaborative.
(how can we encourage this).
Force labs to pay students more. I think there are some catastrophic negative consequences for small labs. Big labs have well funded post-docs that aren’t paid off NIH dollars to start with.
Universities can’t include the “implied” interest of a new building they build with their own money on overhead. But if they borrow money from the government to build the building, they can include the interest in their indirect costs to recover