Pumping more money into the NIH without structural reform of the US biomedical research enterprise is throwing good money after bad, i.e., sheer wastefulness. Why?
- First, decades back, US biomedical research coalesced around a sweatshop structure for staffing labs.
- Second, abolition of mandatory retirement on Jan 1, 1994, means that established PIs (Principal Investigators) who joined in the 1960s and 70s aren't leaving and continue milking the system for what it's worth, at the expense of younger generations.
- Finally, 'the doubling' cemented this already unsustainable structure. 'The doubling' refers to the NIH annual budget increase of 15% for 5 consecutive years from 1998 to 2003, abruptly doubling it from $13 billion to >$27 billion over a short 5 year period. Countrywide, university labs expanded and even increased in number, and more PhDs began entering an already saturated job market. With the Great Recession kicking off in 2007, the economy just couldn't absorb the glut. Some managed to cling on as post-docs, or did multiple post-docs while others left the field altogether.
Sweatshop structure of US biomedical research labs
Biomedical
research labs across the US are increasingly staffed by temporary
workers, namely, poorly paid graduate students and post-doctoral
fellows. In return for hands-on training in the tools of their future
trade, such workers perform the nuts and bolts of US biomedical
research. Training done, they move on into an already saturated job
market hoping the coin toss works in their favor for a faculty position
in an ever-shrinking pool, shrinking largely because increasing number
of older faculty aren't retiring while US universities can't
realistically expand faculty positions to absorb all the newly minted
PhDs. Costs aren't in favor of doing that. Upshot is US biomedical
research labs operate under conditions of constant labor turnover.
Meantime, sampling a teeming supply of ready labor that applies for biomedical PhDs from all over the world (see figure below in the middle from 1),
not just the US, US universities have evolved an assembly-line approach
to plug this temporary worker shortage by filling research labs with
increasing numbers of PhD students and post-docs. Thus, the US has been
graduating a glut of biomedical research PhDs, more than the US job
market could possibly absorb.
Faculty positions
are mainstays for biomedical PhDs but existing US life sciences faculty
positions can't absorb them all so more and more freshly minted PhDs
spend many more years in post-doctoral positions. A rarity in the 1950s
and 60s, today a post-doc after a PhD is thus the norm in biomedical
research (see figure below in the right from 1).
The glut of money that poured into the NIH during 'the doubling'
only exacerbated this pre-existing problem, making its way into the
university system who graduated ever more life science PhDs (see figure below on the left from 1)
even as their ever-aging faculties hung on to their positions. Faculty
expansions from this period only contributed to this problem since they
were immediately followed by precipitous NIH funding declines from 2004
till date. As research funds evaporated, predictable
hyper-competitiveness set in and PIs, especially less secure junior
faculty, spend more of their time chasing fewer research dollars,
writing and revising more grant proposals. Inevitable gap in training
and mentoring slides off onto the hapless shoulders of post-docs while
graduate students cover more of the undergraduate tutoring
responsibilities. Underpaid, overworked labor thus undergirds the
present day US biomedical research enterprise.
Government policy encourages aging of US biomedical research faculty
In
1986, the US congress passed the 1986 Age Discrimination Act. A special
exemption in this Act allowed colleges and universities to enforce
mandatory faculty retirement at age 70 until 1994. The US Congress
allowed this exemption to expire and mandatory retirement for university faculty was abolished on January 1, 1994,
just as a big chunk of faculty hired in the early 1960s approached
traditional retirement. Thus, tenured US faculty have lifetime
employment. Already back in 2001, Orley Ashenfelter and David Card's analysis (2) of 16000 older faculty at 104 colleges and universities across the US found
- Average retirement rates for 70 and 71 year old faculty fell from ~75 and 60%, respectively, to ~30%.
- At age 72, 70 year old faculty who continued working increased from <10% to ~50% once mandatory retirement was abolished.
More
proof of aging leadership in US biomedical research enterprise? Most
lucrative and consequential for biomedical research faculty, the NIH R01 grants are unmistakably aging (see figure below from 3 with numbers from 4).
- Where in 1983, 18% were awarded to < or =36 years of age, they accounted for only ~3% in 2010.
- OTOH, > or =66 years of age accounted for almost nothing in 1980 but accounted for ~7% in 2010.
Since these trends stayed unchanged during 'the doubling', giving NIH more money isn't going to change this status quo.
The US economy cannot absorb the glut in biomedical research PhDs its universities generate
If
not university faculty, then at least jobs in industry should be able
to absorb newly minted biomedical PhDs and post-docs, right? No, US
pharma employment has stayed flat for at least 20 years (see figure below from 5).
The $2 billion increase is thus meaningless for two reasons,
- If it remains a one-off. Since 2016 is presidential election season, all bets are off on what the future portends.
- Inflationary losses since 2003, when NIH budgets flattened or reduced, means that this increase merely takes funding back to 2003 levels. This is because a dollar's worth of research in 2003 would have cost $1.44 in 2015 (see figure below from 6), according to Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB).
In sheer money terms, 2016 NIH budget needs to be ~$48 billion in 2015 dollars to recoup 2003 research strength (see figure below from 7).
Absent
structural reforms, i.e., finding solutions to the politically
incendiary issues of the aging of US faculty and the sweatshop construct
of US basic biomedical research labs, increase in NIH funding is thus
social harm, not social good.
Bibliography
1. 2014 National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators. http://www.nsf.gov/statis
2. Ashenfelter, Orley, and David Card. Did the elimination of mandatory
retirement affect faculty retirement flows?. No. w8378. National bureau
of economic research, 2001. http://www.econstor.eu/bi
3. Sally Rockey. Feb 13, 2012. Age Distribution of NIH Principal Investigators and Medical School Faculty. http://nexus.od.nih.gov/a
4. Alberts, Bruce, et al. "Opinion: Addressing systemic problems in the
biomedical research enterprise." Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 112.7 (2015): 1912-1913. http://www.pnas.org/conte
5. Leadership In Decline. Assessing US International Competitiveness In
Biomedical Research. The Information Technology And Innovation
Foundation And United For Medical Research. Robert D. Atkinson, Stephen
J. Ezell, L. Val Giddings, Luke A.SStewart, Scott M. Andes. May 2012. http://www.unitedformedic
7. On the Cusp of the 2016 Election: Why Is Politics Avoiding Science? April 2, 2015. On the Cusp of the 2016 Election: Why Is Politics Avoiding Science?
Further Reading
1. Teitelbaum, Michael S. "Structural disequilibria in biomedical research." Science 321.5889 (2008): 644-645.
2. Stephan, Paula E. "The biomedical workforce in the US: An example of
positive feedbacks." International Centre for Economic Research Working
Paper 11 (2010). http://sites.gsu.edu/pste
3. How We're Unintentionally Defunding the National Institutes of
Health. Pacific Standard Magazine, Michael White, Nov 27, 2013. http://www.psmag.com/heal
4. Chakma, Justin, et al. "Asia's ascent—global trends in biomedical
R&D expenditures." New England Journal of Medicine 370.1 (2014):
3-6.
5. Updated: Fountain of youth: A congressman's plan to make NIH grantees younger. Science, Jocelyn Kaiser, Oct 6, 2014. Updated: Fountain of youth: A congressman's plan to make NIH grantees younger
6. Alberts, Bruce, et al. "Rescuing US biomedical research from its
systemic flaws." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.16
(2014): 5773-5777. http://www.pnas.org/conte
7. Daniels, Ronald J. "A generation at risk: Young investigators and
the future of the biomedical workforce." Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 112.2 (2015): 313-318. http://www.pnas.org/conte
8. Pickett, Christopher L., et al. "Toward a sustainable biomedical
research enterprise: Finding consensus and implementing
recommendations." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.35
(2015): 10832-10836. http://www.pnas.org/conte
https://www.quora.com/What-consequences-can-bring-a-recent-2-billion-dollars-raise-of-NIH-budget/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
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