Improving American Science: FUNDING BASED ON RESEARCH NEED: Minimal Basic Research Funding (MBRF). A SERIES: Part 2: The Problem

“There is a population of gifted American researchers who are trying very hard to achieve sustainable national funding but, for various reasons, are not succeeding.”
by Marion Freistadt

Part 1: The current situation
Part 2: The problem
Part 3: A solution

NOTE on terminology: the phrases: scientist, researcher, principal investigator (PI), or American, academic biomedical basic researcher (AABBR) are not identical in meaning. However, for the purpose of this series, I use them more or less synonymously.

Series abstract
In this series, I discuss problems with the funding of basic biomedical research in America today. After discussing the current situation in Part I of this series, I describe the problem in the Part 2 of the series. The problem being addressed here may be summarized as low return on investment. Large amounts of money are spent on research, yet much money and human effort is wasted. Supplies and equipment are purchased on arbitrary budget cycles, rather than as needed. Moral is low among many qualified scientists and some leave research (49% in one survey [http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Science-Occupational-Scientific-Careers/dp/0871546949]). After discussing the difficulties, in Part 3 I propose a novel solution, which I call Minimal Basic Research Funding. The proposal may be characterized as research funding based on research need, rather than the peer review.

Summary of Part 1

In Part 1 http://thinkoutsidetheicosahedron.blogspot.com/ (Dec. 27, 2009 post), I described the current situation with regard to career paths for American, academic biomedical basic researchers (AABBR). After about 10 years of graduate and post-graduate training, the researcher seeks to acquire grants, generally from NIH (http://www.nih.gov/ National Institutes of Health, the federal government) while holding an academic position. I described the grant application process. A primary difficulty is passing the “peer-review” process. Universities have a vested interested in researchers’ acquisition of grant funding because in addition to the face value of grants, high overheads are charged.


Part 2 (in the series): The problems
Here, I describe 4 aspects to problems in American academic biomedical basic research. The three aspects are:
1. Why should progress in science be linked to money grubbing?
2. Wasted time and money
3. Wasted materials
4. Discouragement

1. Why should progress in science be linked to money grubbing?

No question, science requires money. Historically, science has carried out by people with money. For example, Darwin was independently wealthy and married a wealthy woman (“Angels and Ages,” By Adam Gopnick). As an undergraduate, it was often quoted to me that the word “school” comes from the Greek word “skole,” roughly meaning “leisure;” that is, having the leisure time to reflect.

However, as described in Part 1 of this series, doing science is, currently, inextricably linked to acquiring funding. The processes are now inseparable. A scientist’s merit is linked to his or her fundraising ability.

I wish to put forth the idea that the process of science should be unlinked from the process of fund-raising. I am not saying that the linkage is undeserved — there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a good scientist being a good fund-raiser. I am saying that they are not the same thing and should not be forcibly linked. The ability to do science consists of skills such as having sufficient background knowledge, forming and testing hypotheses, designing pertinent experiments, performing experiments reliably and interpreting results. The ability to raise funds is a different skillset. As described in Part 1, raising funds for American Academic Biomedical Basic Research requires granstmanship. For example, Karen Hopkins quotes Robert Moon, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator and a professor of pharmacology at the University of Washington in Seattle: "If you fail to win someone as your advocate [in your study section], your grant will sink to the middle of the pile." http://www.mountain-research.org/grantsmanship.htm

I contend that although these skills are somewhat related and may occasionally abide in the same person, they are significantly different skills. Moreover, the opportunity to perform one skillset (science) should not be contingent upon success at a significantly different skillset.

With the stimulus package of 2009, more money became available to researchers. However, a “lottery mentality” prevailed, in which there was a mad dash to submit applications in hopes of increasing one’s odds of success. “Since no one knew, at least initially, how many others were applying or what the odds of success were, a sort of wild optimism—that it might be possible to throw something together faster than competitors and edge them out—took hold, especially among many less-established scientists” http://www.slate.com/id/2217229/pagenum/all/. Many feel that likelihood of success depends (at least in part) on chance (who reviews your grant, how they are feeling, etc), so anything that will increase the odds of success is pursued. Short term increased funding simply was thought to increase their short term odds.

Research science itself is very difficult. Researchers should just do research. They should not be forced to grovel for funding. Ordinarily applying for grant funding is a thankless rat race. When the stimulus package allocated an additional $10.4 billion to NIH, an unseemly money-grabbing gold rush mentality ensued.

Ulterior motives
This linkage become particularly pernicious when linked to University overhead budgets. Not only is the skilled scientist being asked to raise his or her own funds, but to help contribute financially to his or her institution.

A topic that is rarely breached (and is minimized here to avoid appearing unprofessional) is bias in study sections. Reviewers tend to be “leaders” in their field. Therefore, it is often in their interest to stifle competition. What better way to do that than to deny funding to their competitors? Ostensibly, the Center for Scientific Research (CSR, the branch of NIH that oversees the application process) follows strict rules about conflict of interest, but they can never completely remove this. In this way, scientists on study sections can reward their friends and punish their competitors. One blogger points to a linkage between reviewers and the reviewed: researchers from each section are approving researchers from the other study sections! The blogger calls this “insular sub-groupings of scientists protect and maintain themselves and their peers through the grant review process”
http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2009/12/repost_ifcn_clustering_a_crisp.php#more From personal experience, one time a supervisor of mine (a professor at a medical school) told me that he had just rejected a paper of a competitor because he knew that that person would do the same to him.

2. Wasted time
The process of perpetually seeking research funding is often personally detrimental to the researcher. First, it is extremely time-consuming. Here I am speaking of both initial efforts and resubmission efforts.

What fraction of a PI’s time is spent applying for funding?
To achieve success, a researcher must spend a significant proportion of his or her time applying for grants. How much time is spent writing grant applications? One estimate is 50-90% (http://www.slate.com/id/2217229/pagenum/all/).

Here is my estimate, based on personal experience and my colleagues’ experiences. When a grant application deadline approaches, essentially 100% of the PIs time is spent on completing the application. This lead time may constitute up to about one month. If the PI has other professional duties, such as teaching, during business hours, grant-writing may be taken home and/or done during evenings and weekends. During other times, an estimated 20% of a PIs time may be spent identifying funding sources, part-time application preparation, strategizing and other grant-related activities. This constitutes 26.7% of the researcher’s time (100% of 1/12 months + 20% of 11/12 months). If 2 grants are submitted per year, and estimated 33.3% (100% of 2/12 months + 20% of 10/12 months) of a PI’s time may be spent applying for funding. If 3 grant applications are submitted per year, this rises to 40% (100% of 3/12 months + 20% of 9/12 months).

According to Group of Concerned Universities and Research Institutions (GCURI)— “this trend represents a clog in the system that is causing researchers to abandon promising work, downsize labs, and spend more time searching for other financial support" http://www.healthbeatblog.org/2009/01/the-nih-past-present-and-future.html.
The 2007 overall success rate for NIH grant submissions (includes resubmissions) is 24%. This means that a grant application, on average, would have to be submitted 4 times to get funded. (For this calculation, I am ignoring the rule that no separate grant application may be submitted more than 3 times.) Thus, if 40% of a researcher’s time is 24% successful; then 9.6% (24% of 40%) is not wasted, i.e., 30% of his or her time is wasted.

Even the NIH (CSR) assumes that grant applications will be rejected and resubmitted. This is from the CSR website: “Shortening the review process by 45 days could thus reduce the time to resubmit by 4 months.”

A January 2009 article (http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909104450 ) estimates that (in Canada), it costs about $40,000 to prepare, submit and have a grant application rejected. Since this may happen 3 times, annual cost may be $120,000. Since the majority of grant applications (90%, given a 10% first-time success rate) are NOT funded (http://www.brokenpipeline.org/brokenpipeline.pdf), this represents a significant waste of human effort.

3. Wasted materials
I contend that, in addition to wasted time and effort noted above, the grant funding system as it stands results in an unconscionable waste of materials. First, there is the assumption that if grant money is granted, it must be spent. Very few researchers desire to return unspent funds. So spending decisions are based on the amount of money remaining in the budget, rather than what is actually required for research.

Moreover, since budgets are delimited in time, unspent funds must be spent in a particular budget period. Most researchers are familiar with task of spending inordinate amounts of money at the end of a grant period. Thus, piles of unused or underused materials accumulate. Much of this is not used and eventually discarded. Data on this phenomenon is hard to find, since records are not kept. Yet it is a phenomenon that most researchers have experienced.

Submitting applications is not a GREEN process
Electronic grant submission is improving the “paper” footprint of the grant funding system, but certainly many mountains of paperwork have been generated and thrown away in the process. As a graduate student, I remember hearing tales of backhoes being used to move applications around NIH receiving warehouses for grant applications.

4. Discouragement
Aside from the inherent waste of time and money, many scientists get discouraged. This is reflected in many ways. “The personal and institutional toll of continuing to write unfunded applications and concern over attaining research aspirations is severe, and often not recognized,” from “The Broken Pipeline” a report issued by Group of Concerned Universities and Research Institutions (CGCURI) http://www.brokenpipeline.org/brokenpipeline.pdf
“Tom Cech, a Nobel laureate and [HHMI] president, said that the current NIH funding climate is highly stressful and distracting. ‘Here you have these people who've been in school for 30 years, they've just gotten their labs going, and instead of spending their time making discoveries in the lab or mentoring younger scientists, they spend all their time in an office writing federal grant applications. It's not a very effective use of their talent" http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/03/10/funding_freeze_chills_research_careers_too/?page=2.
A scientist who persists in applying, despite lack of funding success, may have undue stress and lose professional enjoyment. They may become depressed (http://www.brokenpipeline.org/brokenpipeline.pdf).
To clarify, the word depression has two senses. Clinical depression is a disease, with a (partially understood) chemistry, that is treatable with medication. This kind of depression is often unrelated to life events. The word “depression” is also used vernacularly to describe discouraging situations. Here, I am mostly talking about the LATTER, nonclinical depression. However, in some people (presumably those that have some sort of predisposition) discouraging situations can lead to depression, the disease.

According to Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs, all humans require esteem and self-actualization. Constant deprivation of professional success may lead to social anxiety, depression and suicide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs . (According to http://listverse.com/2007/10/07/top-10-scientists-who-committed-suicide/ , and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scientists_who_committed_suicide some scientists commit suicide. Obviously, these are complicated cases, with multiple and inscrutable factors contributing this disastrous outcome. I mention only it to emphasize the importance of providing satisfactory working conditions for scientists.) I would like to reduce the discouraging nature of AABBR life, keeping an eye to rare, pathological situations.

Here are some blogs by biomedical graduate students (and other researchers) documenting the travails of AABBRs. These blogs give a sense of the AABBR laboratory life culture. Some discuss depression. All show dedication and hard work. (http://youngfemalescientist.blogspot.com/2006/10/psychology-of-young-scientist.html http://ilovesciencereally.wordpress.com/ , http://wecansleeplater.blogspot.com/ , http://2postdocswalkintoabar.blogspot.com/ http://trainingprofessor.blogspot.com/ )

A discussion board in the “Slate” revealed a torrent of unhappy former researchers (http://www.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/2857508.aspx)

“--After getting a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at MIT (one of the top programs in the field) I was unable to find a job in science that would pay enough to support my family.
à If you want to work you butt off, expected to put in outrageous hours and have no social life, for financial rewards that don't remotely compare to the amount of time and lost earnings you put into your education, this is the career for you!
--If you want to write grant proposals, 90% of which will be rejected, then observe the government hand AIG $180 billion, equal to several years of combined NSF, NIH and NASA budgets, go for it.
--Please go philosophize to the dozens of friends (women and men) that I've seen laid off. You can't do much science if you're unemployed. Preach to the assistant professors denied tenure, not for lack of publications, or lack of quality research, or failing to teach; it's solely because they couldn't master grantsmanship fast enough, or weren't in an area deemed important by the powers-that-be at the funding agencies. Tell it to the many who disgustedly left science to get law or business degrees.”
Another consequence of the funding difficulties is that fewer people are choosing this career path. From 1970-2006, the overall number of total PhD faculty in (?American) medical schools increased from 8,800 to 38,000. However, the percentage of these that constitute new faculty decreased from 13% to 3%. (http://newvoicesforresearch.blogspot.com/2009/05/from-training-to-practice-joining.html. According former NIH director, Elias Zerhouni, soon there will be more scientists over 65 than those younger than 35 (http://www.brokenpipeline.org/brokenpipeline.pdf). More blog comments on the aging of new investigators can be found at: http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/2008/03/flat_funding_fo.html


How many scientists have left science due (directly or indirectly) to lack of funding, and/or discouragement from the situation?
http://www.brokenpipeline.org/brokenpipeline.pdf gives anecdotal evidence, but not data, for this. Anne Elizabeth Preston (“Leaving Science: occupational exit from scientific careers” [2004]) surveyed about 1,700 people “who received university degrees in the natural sciences or engineering between 1965 and 1990.” Dr. Preston found that only 51% remained in science. This analysis focuses on salaries and job satisfaction. Dissatisfaction was found in “lack of mentoring and guidance, especially early in the career, inability to shoulder the double burden of scientific career and family, mismatch between the individual’s interests and the requirements of a scientific career, discontent with income and opportunity." The extent to which discouragement about raising funds is not clear; however, it certainly plays a role. “Discontent with income and opportunity” may be indirectly related to research funding difficulties, since advancement is linked to success in fund-raising.

Final note: throwing more money is not necessarily the solution

Earmarking money for basic science research is a good thing. However, equally important is how that money is used. The quote below describes the electrifying, but polarizing, effect that simply throwing money at a problem (even to normally reserved scientists) can have:

“The lottery mentality has been especially acute when it comes to the new NIH Challenge Grants, which promise, in total, at least $200 million to 200 or more researchers. …"In my lab, people stopped doing anything smart," a biology researcher in New Jersey told me. (Most of the half-dozen researchers I spoke with declined to talk on the record, for fear of jeopardizing their applications.)… (Many have combed the topic lists to see where their work might fit in. This has involved a lot of all-nighters and an "almost comedic reshaping of what people do," said the New Jersey biologist.)…. As a result, the competition has started to look something like America's Got Talent—if Bob Dylan, Beyoncé, and Bono were allowed to compete.” http://www.slate.com/id/2217229/pagenum/all/

A recent article http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007015#s2 analyzes whether there is a relationship between research funding and new drug approval in the decade 1995-2005. The authors find that correlation is low; that is, despite significant increased funding, new drug approval “was flat or declined across therapeutic areas.” Moreover, the authors conclude: “remedies must include changes beyond additional financial investment.”

The proposals put forth in this series are NOT for more money. My ideas are how to use existing funding better; that is, how to get more bang for the buck.