And people think I'm down about the current situation.
In the last issue of Cell, Robert A. Weinberg is calling the current batch of postdocs The Lost Generation.
The abstract:
The funding policies of the NIH have made it increasingly difficult for young researchers to procure research funds. This threatens to drive a whole generation of young people away from careers in basic biomedical research.
First Paul Nurse, now Weinberg, I hope they are paying attention!
The numbers are striking. Over the past generation, the age at which American biomedical researchers with PhD degrees succeed in obtaining their first R01 award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has increased from 34.2 to 41.7 years of age. As a consequence, the biomedical community in the United States lives with the prospect of relying on an aging cohort of researchers to direct its research projects. The reasons for this are surely complex, but the long-term trend is ominous for the future of the American research enterprise. Why are R01 grants becoming so difficult to obtain? And what does this portend for future innovation and discovery by NIH-supported researchers?
Feed the old, starve the young.
The history of the last half-century demonstrates in a compelling fashion that much of the innovation in American biomedical research comes from young researchers working in relatively small, highly mobile, creative research groups. These groups operate opportunistically to exploit new research findings and to catapult our understanding forward, often doing so with stunning rapidity. These younger researchers, ranging from predoctoral students to principal investigators in their 30s and early 40s, have time and again delivered on the promise that unfettered imaginations and boundless energy are uniquely suited to generate new conceptual paradigms in biology. These young people represent the cadre of researchers whose vitality we must preserve at all costs. These people are the last who should suffer from a flat NIH budget.
Those who lead the U.S. Federal research agencies in Bethesda, Maryland, have lost sight of this simple truth. As a consequence, American biomedical research is increasingly reverting to models of research organization that have held back scientific progress in many other parts of the world. In these models, researchers acquire their scientific independence only when in their 40s and even 50s, long after the peak of their scientific creativity has passed.
But it's not only that money is going to older researchers. Money is being fed into the latest fad, "Big Biology". These Big Biology groups are led by the elders ... and quite honestly have been oversold.
The failure to recognize and halt this trend is compounded by another problem. As time goes on, ever-larger proportions of NIH funds are diverted to funding research collaboratives of various sizes to the detriment of small, investigator-initiated projects. Perhaps those in power have been influenced by the obvious successes of the Human Genome Sequencing Project and the bounty of useful information that it has yielded. Those who control the scientific purse strings seem to have lost sight of the fact that this undoubted success does not provide a useful template for how most discovery research is conducted. In the case of the National Cancer Institute, this vision of grand projects and their utility has caused this particular Institute to invest large amounts of funds in proteomics, nanotechnology, and a massive software development program that aspires to make the data systems of American research hospitals intercompatible. Implied in the launching of these large-scale projects is the notion that if small-scale projects yield relatively small advances, much larger projects will yield proportionately more.
Stated differently, some live with the notion that the era of small-scale discovery research has passed and that the time has finally arrived to organize large research consortia to move things forward more effectively. The truth is otherwise: the vast majority of recent leaps forward have come, as they did in the past, from relatively small research groups that have been given the license to venture out and explore the outer boundaries of existing understanding. Large-scale projects surely have their place, and technology advances made over the past decade dictate that some of these must be supported in order for science to be moved forward. But in the end, the viability of small research groups and investigator-initiated research should be paramount and must be protected; indeed, it must be the number one priority for those who invest in biomedical research. Large collaborative research programs tend to stifle discovery research rather than expediting it.
Exactly!
As a consequence of these trends, small-scale discovery research is under siege, yet it is precisely such small-scale science that attracts the best and the brightest of our young people. Many of those who are training for careers in research do not look forward to working as members of large research consortia, in which they will only serve as small cogs in very large wheels.
So is the prognosis for the near future? Weinberg has a dire prediction:
Increasingly, these factors dictate that the best and the brightest are not entering our ranks. As a consequence, those of us who conduct discovery research are confronting the prospect of a lost generation, a wide gap in our ranks, as bright young people look elsewhere to discover their career paths. The marvelous engine of American biomedical research that was constructed during the last half of the 20th century is being taken apart, piece by piece. We will all pay for this destruction for decades to come.
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"Perhaps those in power have been influenced by the obvious successes of the Human Genome Sequencing Project"
I thought the rationale behind the genome project was that it was a project that needed to be done, but was too large for any one lab to do. The goal was just to churn through the whole sequence as fast as possible, rather than to come up with innovative ideas (although certainly there was innovation in sequencing methods).
I can see large-scale projects being useful, in terms of creating resources that will help the whole biomedical research community, but I think that's the only case where sacrificing creativity for the ability to get a big job done pays off.
In general, it seems fairly obvious that the more different approaches people take for solving a problem, the more likely it is that one of them will work.
I saw the prelude to this in Paul and Kirsten Boyd Goldberg's The Cancer Letter where Weinberg said he would not recommend cancer research as a career for any young scientist.
Big biology is mortgaging, no, squandering, the future of biomedical science in the US. Large programs have their place, but most certainly not at the expense of investigator-initiated R01s. In fact, even some mechanisms we used to think of big biology (program projects (P01s)) have also been also be cut due to the care and feeding of big biology.
I was very lucky to win my first R01 at age 33 almost ten years ago during a similar nadir in NIH funding. The difference between then and now is that R01s were protected and the Human Genome Project was the only huge biology initiative. I'm not sure I would've had the perseverence, sanity, or patience of my dept administration to wait until now to get my first R01.
Thankfully, Weinberg is such a great scientific statesman and is so accomplished, he can speak out because he doesn't need to tread water buried as an investigator in these boondoggle awards. We need more senior scientists to be speaking out on behalf of the next generation. As Weinberg says, "these people are the last who should suffer from a flat NIH budget."
And, perhaps, even mid-career scientists like I should even be more vocal even if my opinion carries 1/1000th the importance of Weinberg's. Without the excitement, creativity, and innovation of folks like your generation, my future and that of the entire US biomedical research enterprise is equally bleak.
I was in the audience at the AACR Meeting in Washington in April when Weinberg spoke. He started out his speech with basically the Cliff Notes version of his editorial. He got a prolonged standing ovation.
Actually, it also occurred to me. I was only slightly older than the median age of 41.7 when I got my first R01. However, for me, I think, that was due to my ridiculously prolonged medical, surgical, and PhD training. I didn't even get my first "real" job until I was almost 38.
I tried to get a hold of a digital copy but it required a subscription. If I have time I'll have to venture to the library and check it out. (Or if anyone was kind enough they could post it online ...)
Ni hao! Kannichi Wa!The impact is not limited to younger scientists. There are many highly independent, innovative investigators with many years of sustained research and contribution who have dedicated their lives to relatively small research groups that have been given the license to venture out and explore the outer boundaries of existing understanding.--Weinberg quote. Their careers are also cut short by the whims of the funding system. They are throwing up their hands and saying "hell, with it, I'm taking my retirement and running to other ventures" just when their experience and willingness to take risks is greatest (nothing to loose, no asses to kiss) and they can afford maximal effort in broadening their mentorship activities compared to their juniors who need to extract maximum productivity from their lab hands (students and postdocs) for promotion purposes. The R01 concept of funding small research teams is the historically proven way to go. However, with the so-called peer review system in shambles and not much more than a complicated and costly lottery system, not to mention the distribution of results through the publication industry, and with the average age of the first R01 grantee over 40, the R01 mechanism needs some scrutiny and reform.I don't know if a systematic study has been done, but I suspect that a large number of R01 projects are isolated flashes in the pan, and not a part of a consistent sustained steady program of individual investigator inquiry. One wonders how many project periods of funding are really wasted, never renewed, that little good publishable contributions come out of them in the literature. Related to this I am hearing that instead of steady R01 renewals based on previous period track record, investigators are frantically writing more projects of unrelated themes in a random search for what will sound good or look glamorous to their reviewers of the moment, whose choice is sometimes no more than a lottery either. By buying more lottery tickets, one has a better chance of winning.Here's my recommendations:(1) Orient the majority of NIH funds other than infrastructure or facility subsidies to individual investigator-initiated and led R01 grants.(2) Put restraints on total dollars to any one individual represented by R01 grants. (3) Fund all new investigators after a triage of certain basic fundamentals based on having had reasonable training, recommendations by former mentors, publication records, having a valid host institution with facilities and startup, etc. If there is not enough funds, fund by lottery since no one has a track record on which to judge ability as an independent investigator and administrator of a first R01 better than another. Each subsequent proposal should be judged in view of the lifetime track record of the PI on all previous funded projects from NIH, independent of whether it is a renewal or a new proposal. (4) Fund individuals with ever increasing priority and size of budget as they exhibit a proven track record on a continuous career stream of productivity.(5) Easier said than done, but most importantly is to fund projects based on concept, innovation and novelty with potential for long term impact rather than grantsmanship, proven feasibility and glamour of the moment. Currently, the most fundable projects are those that the reviewer can understand because they most likely have already been done to some extent or the other.MOTYR
Does anyone know what is the current average age for getting an independent position? I feel that this age also increased, because in the past generation, post-doctoral training was shorter or non-existent. So the age to get the first R01 maybe is not that different if we take into account the post-doctoral training.
Still, I feel it is more and more difficult to get a R01
MOTYR,
Nice ideas ... I like proposal #3. But I would modify it ... provide transitional grants for postdocs who are leaving a lab and starting their own lab . Actually the NIH has a program (K99/R00)... but I don't know the specifics. Here is a link to an entry on this topic from my old blog.