Well, yes, that's something that all of us, cancer researchers or not, complain about fairly regularly: the requirement for in-depth preliminary data that signals "The first aim is all but complete" before funding shows up.
But I think she buried the real story. Anyone else catch the graph?
Let's take a couple of years here for illustrative purposes.
In 1996, we spent about $3 bn on NCI total, of which $0.6 bn went to "Other expenditures--non research." That's 20%.
In 2005, we spent about $5 bn on NCI total, of which $1.5 bn went to "Other expenditures--non research." That's 30%. Aka, a 50% increase in proportion of non-research expenditures.
Now, there are plenty of other remarks to be made about the article, including "Biology is really complex and simplistic formulations like 'The War on Cancer' are downright silly;" and "You see how funding flatlined and then actually sank? That might have something to do with reviewers becoming conservative." Neither of which was ever addressed in Kolata's article.
But looking at that graph, all I can ask is: where is this non-research money going? Is this due to an increase in overhead/indirect costs? And if so, why? Did it really get that much more expensive to administer and run science buildings starting around the year 2000?
For 2005 alone, if these non-research costs could have been kept at their original 20%, there would be an extra half-billion dollars freed up for cancer research funding. At, say, $250,000 per project/year, that's an extra 2000 projects that didn't happen. In 2005 alone.
This article felt like one of those talks where the speaker doesn't address some really fundamental issue up front, and I can't even process the rest of the talk because I'm so focused on this problem raised by the graph on the third slide.
7 comments:
Is this due to an increase in overhead/indirect costs?
I'm pretty sure that indirect costs included in extramural research grants are counted as research expenditures on the Institute balance sheets.
I know, only 20-30% of the costs is too low for it to be IC anyhow--even state schools usually demand 50%, right?--but I just don't know what it does represent. $1.5 bn seems like an awful lot for the Zerhouni equivalent salary and admin.
It includes salaries of non-research personnel at NCI--program officers, grants management specialists, and other administrators--and the physical infrastructure that those people rely on.
30% seems out of whack for grants administration, even if some of the physical infrastructure costs went through the roof in the 2000s because of real estate.
That's on the highish end for non-profits, and they have to beg for money year-in and year-out. NIH etc do some lobbying but never need to run ads or solicit with direct-mail. Sure, a program officer needs to be paid well since that's a highly skilled position, but why the run-up from 20 to 30%?
I get a little hot and bothered when I see stuff like this. $$$ just floating around, not being used for research. I don't have any answers, but thanks for bringing it to our attention- the graph is interesting if nothing else.
The NCI does more than just research. If you look at their mission statement, I would say almost half of their goals aren't directly supporting research (although all but one or two are indirectly supporting research)
hmm. construction grants? maybe.
but I think the point was supposed to be that the research money itself is going to the wrong people.
based on who I've seen getting NCI money, I would tend to second that assessment. incremental? ha!
try: leftover from old notebooks of postdocs long past/unreproducible/have NO intention of actually working on what was in the grant
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