NIH gets serious about the mouths-at-the-trough. Sortof.

The latest Open Mike blogpost from NIH Deputy Director for the OER, Mike Lauer, ventures into analysis of TheRealProblem at last.

The setup, in and of itself, is really good information.

We first looked at all research project grants (RPGs) funded between 2003 and 2015. For each year, we identified unique principal investigators who were named on at least one RPG award in that year. Figure 1 shows that the number of NIH-supported investigators has increased only slightly, and has remained fairly constant at about 27,500 over the past thirteen years.

Burn that one into your brain, people. There are about 27,500 unique PIs funded at any given time and this number has been rock steady for at least thirteen years. Sure, it is crazy-making stuff that they do not go back past the doubling interval to see what is really going on but hey, this is a significant improvement. At last the NIH is grappling with their enterprise by funded-investigators instead of funded-applications. This is a key addition and long, long overdue. I approve.

There are some related analyses from DataHound that lead into these considerations as well. I recommend you go back and read Longitudinal PI Analysis: Distributions, Mind the Gap and especially A longitudinal analysis of NIH R-Funded Investigators: 2006-2013. This latter one estimated a similar number of unique PIs but it also estimated the churn rate, that is, the number in each fiscal year that are new and the number who have left the funded-PI distribution (it was about 5,300 PIs per FY).

Back to Lauer’s post for the supplicant information that DataHound couldn’t get:

To determine how many unique researchers want to be funded, we identified unique applicants over 5-year windows. We chose to look at a multi-year window for two reasons: most research grants last for more than one year and most applicants submit applications over a period of time measured in years, not just 12 months, that may overlap with their periods of funding, if they are funded. Figure 2 shows our findings for applicants as well as awardees: the number of unique applicants has increased substantially, from about 60,000 investigators who had applied during the period from 1999 to 2003 to slightly less than 90,000 in who had applied during the period from 2011 to 2015.

via https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2016/05/31/how-many-researchers/

The too-many-mouths problem is illustrated. Simply. Cleanly. We can speculate about various factors until the cows come home but this is IT.

Too Many Mouths At The Trough And Not Enough Slops.

The blogpost then goes on to calculate a Cumulative Investigator Rate which is basically how many PIs get funded over a 5 year interval out of those who wish to be funded. In 2003 it was 43% and this declined to 31% in 2015. This was for RPGs. If you limit to R01 only, the CIR goes from 45% to 34% over this interval of time. For R21s, the CIR was at 20% in 2003 and is down around 11% for 2015. Newsbreak: Funding rates for R21s are terrible, despite what you would imagine should be the case for this mechanism.

Now we get to the hard part. Having reviewed these data the person responsible for the entire Extramural Research enterprise of NIH boots the obvious. Hard. First, he tries to off load the responsibility by citing Kimble et al and Pickett et al. Then he basically endorses their red herring distractions (when it comes to this particular issue).

NIH leadership is currently engaged in efforts to explore which policies or policy options best assure efficient and sustainable funding given the current hypercompetitive environment. These efforts include funding opportunity announcements for R35 awards which focus on programs, rather than highly specific projects; new models for training graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; establishment of an office of workforce diversity;

Right? It’s right there in front of you, dude, and you can’t even say it as one of a list of possible suggestions.

We need to stop producing so many PhD scientists.

This is the obvious solution. It is the only thing that will have sustained and systematic effect, while retaining some thin vestige of decency towards the people who have already devoted years and decades to the NIH extramural enterprise.

Oh and don’t get me too wrong. From a personal perspective, clearly Lauer is not completely idiotic:

and even what we are doing here, namely drawing attention to numbers of unique investigators and applicants.

HAHAHHAHAHAAH. What a bureaucratic weasel. He sees it all right. He does. And he’s trying to wink it into the conversation without taking any responsibility whatsoever. I see you, man. I see you. Okay. I’ll take up the hard work for you.

We need to stop training so many PhDs. Now. Yesterday in fact. All of us. Stop pretending your high-falutin program gets to keep all their students and those inferior jerks, over there, need to close up shop. Significant reductions are called for.

Personally, I call for a complete moratorium on new PhD admits for 5 years.

Go.