Every time I talk to a biologist they say "yes, the NIH is horrible, it's impossible to get anything interesting funded by it, it's getting worse by the year, and God I hope Congress increases its budget because my career depends on it."The NIH is a tyrannical, capricious, self-serving $50 billion a year Kafkaesque Leviathan ruled over by a clique of septuagenarians who couldn't care less for science or for scientists.
"It provides 7 times more funding to scientists 66 years old and older (literally retirement age) than to those 35 and younger." This is an absurdly distorted way of making a claim about the funding distribution. The graph clearly shows a nearly completely uniform distribution of funding across all age brackets. The smaller portion going to those under 35 could easily be an artifact of fewer applications in that age bracket - likely there are relatively much fewer lab PIs under 35.
Exactly. If you graduate from college, do a normal length PhD and then a normal length postdoc, you’re like 33. Some people think those processes should be shorter but honestly biology isn’t like computer science. It’s less about genius and more about knowing lots of stuff.
Destroying the NIH would be a disaster on many levels, both from a scientific perspective and from an economic one. As we’re already seeing, the entire academic enterprise is being destabilized, with graduate programs rescinding offers from students and labs having to close down in response to the uncertainty. The NIH also provides millions to billions in economic output on a state and national level, and the loss of jobs that will occur due to loss in funding will destabilize local, state, and the national economy. Scientific research is one of the last places where the U.S. leads the world. While the NIH has its faults, as you’ve depicted rather grandiosely in this post, these are shortsighted reasons to decimate one of the world’s leading research institutes. Why not fix the problems instead?
I agree with many of your points but a radical position to close the NIH is not the solution. And there’s a reason why most funding goes to scientists that are near or at retirement age. They are established scientists with a record of producing results and getting a return of investment of our tax dollars. Younger scientists should also be funded but the decision to do so should be based on merit, innovation, on the data they have generated to support their grant applications and on clarity of their proposals, including ways they would go about to solve experimental obstacles or difficulties.
These same principles should be applied to established older scientists and not giving them a blank check just because of previous track record. I believe that the best way to correct some of the ailments you describe is to have study sections that avoid biases or conflicts of interests in their reviews. Perhaps even finding a way in the process of grant reviewing of not including the names of the applicants to a first round of reviews (?).
Making the NIH disappear is NOT the solution. Optimizing how it should work is.
In general, the government bureaucracy believes in a few things:
1. No one gets fired for giving work or grants to a famous person, organization, or company.
2. The below statement is also true for most of the scientists: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Plank or in another terms science progress one funeral at a time.
3. Getting published in reputable journals has become a higher priority than anything else. People’s promotions, tenure, and careers depend on it.
4. As Charlie Munger has said “show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.” You get what you tolerate. In most cases, the government employees have very little incentives to take big risks and that’s why they do not take it.
I do think Covid probably leaked from a lab and I think the dedication to avoid public oversight makes this seem more likely and the staggering lack of consequences for anyone involved makes me feel like a member of an increasingly doomed-looking species.
"It provides 7 times more funding to scientists 66 years old and older (literally retirement age) than to those 35 and younger." This is an absurdly distorted way of making a claim about the funding distribution. The graph clearly shows a nearly completely uniform distribution of funding across all age brackets. The smaller portion going to those under 35 could easily be an artifact of fewer applications in that age bracket - likely there are relatively much fewer lab PIs under 35.
Exactly. If you graduate from college, do a normal length PhD and then a normal length postdoc, you’re like 33. Some people think those processes should be shorter but honestly biology isn’t like computer science. It’s less about genius and more about knowing lots of stuff.
Destroying the NIH would be a disaster on many levels, both from a scientific perspective and from an economic one. As we’re already seeing, the entire academic enterprise is being destabilized, with graduate programs rescinding offers from students and labs having to close down in response to the uncertainty. The NIH also provides millions to billions in economic output on a state and national level, and the loss of jobs that will occur due to loss in funding will destabilize local, state, and the national economy. Scientific research is one of the last places where the U.S. leads the world. While the NIH has its faults, as you’ve depicted rather grandiosely in this post, these are shortsighted reasons to decimate one of the world’s leading research institutes. Why not fix the problems instead?
I agree with many of your points but a radical position to close the NIH is not the solution. And there’s a reason why most funding goes to scientists that are near or at retirement age. They are established scientists with a record of producing results and getting a return of investment of our tax dollars. Younger scientists should also be funded but the decision to do so should be based on merit, innovation, on the data they have generated to support their grant applications and on clarity of their proposals, including ways they would go about to solve experimental obstacles or difficulties.
These same principles should be applied to established older scientists and not giving them a blank check just because of previous track record. I believe that the best way to correct some of the ailments you describe is to have study sections that avoid biases or conflicts of interests in their reviews. Perhaps even finding a way in the process of grant reviewing of not including the names of the applicants to a first round of reviews (?).
Making the NIH disappear is NOT the solution. Optimizing how it should work is.
The main reasons for stagnation in medecine do not derive from ageism or total funding even though those are key issues.
Why would the outcome be different with new agencies? Isn't the solution to defund all government science?
In general, the government bureaucracy believes in a few things:
1. No one gets fired for giving work or grants to a famous person, organization, or company.
2. The below statement is also true for most of the scientists: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Plank or in another terms science progress one funeral at a time.
3. Getting published in reputable journals has become a higher priority than anything else. People’s promotions, tenure, and careers depend on it.
4. As Charlie Munger has said “show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.” You get what you tolerate. In most cases, the government employees have very little incentives to take big risks and that’s why they do not take it.
I do think Covid probably leaked from a lab and I think the dedication to avoid public oversight makes this seem more likely and the staggering lack of consequences for anyone involved makes me feel like a member of an increasingly doomed-looking species.
The lab leak is empirically proven https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349073738_An_investigation_into_the_WIV_databases_that_were_taken_offline
The substack community is limited to surface level knowledge nobody has made an exhaustive coherent analysis.
You’re preaching to the choir, more or less. Also, I think you’re basing a little unfair to “the Substack community”: https://open.substack.com/pub/alexwasburne/p/the-strength-of-evidence-for-a-lab?r=6agbi&utm_medium=ios