In the August issue of The Scientist, there is an article entitle "The Inequity of Science" (Not online yet). It describes how the top academic institutions are getting more and more of the total NIH funding.
Between 1994 and 2004, in the rankings of universities and colleges according tototal R&D expenditures in biological sciences, the difference between the number one school and the 100th school more than doubled.
Echoing Bob Weinberg's commentary,
In 2005, the principal investigator on the biggest grant, Eric Lander at MIT, received more than $50 million, nearly seven times the total amount given to all institutions in the state of Wyoming.
So here's a rundown of the numbers for funding by Institution:
Institution, amount in millions for 2004
1) John Hopkins, $599
2) U of Washington, $473
3) U Penn, $464
4) UCSF, $438
5) Science Applications Int. Corp., $403 (I've never heard of this place!)
6) Washington U, $388
7) U of Michigan, $368
8) UCLA, $361
9) U of Pittsburgh, $360
10) Duke, $343
Now I was initially surprised that my institution (Harvard Medical School) wasn't on the list. Not just because it was Harvard, but this place is HUGE (in terms of the number of researchers). But there was a note after the table explaining that the numbers did not include funding directed to an Institution's affiliated hospitals. With its 5 hospitals, Harvard receives the most funding, $852 million.
And individuals? Here's a list of the top funded biolabs (many are part of the big biology club):
Lab PI (Principal Investigator), Institution, Amount in millions, Project Type
1) Landers, MIT, $53, Informatics & genome
2) Richard Wilson, Washington U, $46, Informatics & genome
3) Richard Gibbs, Baylor, $33, Rhesus, Macaque & Bovine genomes
4) Katryn Hirst, George Washington U, $31, type 2 diabetes clinical trials
5) Gregory Rearman, National Cancer Research Center, $26, reduce childhood cancer deaths and increase disease free survival rates
6) Lawrence Corey, Fred Hutch., $26, HIV vaccine research
7) Charles Bailey, George Mason U, $25, construction of a biocontainment Lab for biodefense research
8) Constance Benson, Social Scientific Systems, $20, HIV pathogenesis and therapy
9) Jeffrey Krischer, U South Florida, $20, identify triggers for type I diabetes
10) Bruce Hillman, American College of Radiology, $19, imaging technology for use in cancer (clinical)
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Alex, Sci Applications International Corp., or SAIC, is a company that used to be part of NCI-Frederick. I looked at NCI-Frederick for a postdoc and got back something from a place called SAIC-Frederick as it was called at the time. If you look closely in the CRISP database or NIH grants vs. contracts breakdowns, SAIC mostly gets contracts to conduct NCI-dictated work like xenograft expts and such as opposed to investigator-initiated research.
BTW, thanks for posting the Weinberg commentary and continuing this discussion about Big Biology - this is invaluable for me and I hope I can be part of the solution
As someone who just joined Gibbs' HGSC at BCM, I feel compelled to defend the genome sequencing parts of 'big biology'. This is a case where the industry of scale kicks in and it's much cheaper to sequence organisms at large, well established centers like the HGSC.
That information is then made publicly available where it is able to impact the research of thousands of labs and PIs. Basically, places like the HGSC do the dirty work (sequencing/assembly) so that others can work on the cool problems (finding genes, mutations, links to diseases, etc). Better yet, the free data gives anyone with a computer the resources to attack scientific discovery.
I suppose I just don't see how that's a bad thing.
Chris,
I don't think that there is anything wrong with Big Biology in itself. Yes the information gathered from many sequencing centers has become an immensely valuable resource for the rest of us (biologists), however I think that Big Biology is oversold. Genomes and the rest are great ONLY if you also fund those who benefit the most from these projects: small labs. Right now it is extremely difficult for young new lab heads (and many older ones) to get funding. Small Biology may not be as "sexy", but in my opinion it's where most of the exploration is done, it's where most of the insights come from ... and it gets you the biggest bang for the buck.
Now it's good that the NIH funds a diverse array of projects, but increasingly there is a clear (and I think misguided) diversion of funds away from small biology.
It describes how the top academic institutions are getting more and more of the total NIH funding.
It's not just NIH. I know in astronomy, more and more money is going to go to fund major megaprojects, the leaders of which are institutions whose names you could guess. To fund this, portions of the telescopes at national observatories (to which anybody can apply) are being sold off.
It's a classic self-perpetuating thing. Those with the most prestige and influence control the debate. Even if they are completely honest about it, the sorts of things that they thin are the best return on investment are going to be the sorts of things they have chosen to invest themselves in-- and so more resources, and thereby more prestige and influence, go to those institutions. Woe to you if you are one of the little guys.
-Rob
Ni Hao! Kannichi Wa!The problem is Big Biology has evolved to be the antithesis of science posing as science. The scientific method consists of conceptual hypothesis and then testing of it toward new understanding of the biological world. Not the mindless mass production of empirical data using assembly line managerial principles and labor similar to Henry Ford's automobile assembly lines.The current system in which they are not adequately dissected is the most inefficient and wasteful of resources. Assembly line production is inefficient if run by designers and design is usually inefficient when run by assembly line managers.MOTYR