via Lenny Bernstein at the Washington Post:
What Bielekova doesn’t have, at age 47, is tenure, the coveted guarantee of recognition, job security and freedom to pursue controversial ideas that is critical to long-term success in an academic career. She was not put forward as a candidate for the second time last year, despite a positive recommendation from a panel of outside experts who reviewed her qualifications.
To me the kicker is this part. NIH intramural is weird the way they have big deal lab heads and a lot of career scientists under them that would be standard tenure rank folks elsewhere. So when the big deal head dies or retires it is always a little weird. Do they hand the lab to one of the folks already there? And boot the rest? Or do they spawn off a couple of new jobs? or find homes for people in other big-deal groups?
Bielekova alleges retaliation and discrimination based on gender after what she describes as a “power struggle” following the retirement of her mentor, who was chief of the neuro-immunology branch. She said male scientists were provided numerous advantages in the aftermath and that she has been harmed by groundless accusations from male colleagues of unprofessional conduct. A male colleague from her branch, she said, was nominated for tenure at the same time that she was held back.
Yep.
Amazingly Story Landis, prior NINDS Director, gave the full reveal quote:
While tenure awards are supposed to be based largely on merit, it is widely acknowledged that personality conflicts, budget constraints, internal politics and other factors affect them.
“Tenure decisions are complicated, and not just about what you’ve published,” Landis said.
In this, the NIH IRPs are no different than anywhere else, eh? It isn’t about objective merits but about the subjective views of your colleagues, when it comes right down to it.
And lets in a whole lot o’ bias.
Bielekova, ..has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint against her institute’s director and two others,
Twill be interesting to watch this play out.
Really NIDA National Advisory Council? REALLY????
June 9, 2015
I was reading over the minutes from the 119th meeting of the National Advisory Council for NIDA. As you may imagine, Dear Reader, I am more than usually interested in the doings of this particular IC.
I ran across the part where Hannah A. Valantine, M.D., MRCP, Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity, National Institutes of Health came to report on diversity issues, explicitly linked to the wake of the Ginther report.
She began her focus as the COSWD by reviewing evidence from the NIH Intramural Research Program as a Laboratory for Testing Interventions to Diversify the Biomedical Workforce evaluation. The results, as of October 2014 showed that among intramural tenure track investigators 38 % are female and 1.4% are African American, 10% are Hispanic, and 0.5% are Native American compared to approximately 61% being both males and white.
PhotoCredit: NIDA IRP
Not something that is on our radar that much out here in extramural researchistan but…. yeah. Get on that NIH ICs. I would be fascinated to see the representation numbers for the various NIH Intramural Research Programs at the various levels of lab heads and non-head so-called tenure-track investigators. I imagine this is not going to look good.
There’s a lot more blah de blah in the NIDA Council notes from Valantine about the NIH efforts, particularly the “pipeline” solutions that so irritate me.
But that isn’t the hilarious part. The hilarious part comes after Valentine described
…in detail the strategy and essential components, such as a strategic partnership with research intensive institutions, and tracking and evaluation. Program deliverables, would include: a national network to support career transitions; evidence-based literature to eliminate/reduce barriers to key career transition points; Individual access to the network in support of career development success; organizational infrastructure to support career development and transitions; and tools and resources to catalyze and sustain career transition success.
Here was the Council response.
NIDA Council members thanked Dr. Valantine for her dedication to this issue and for implementing so many diverse and potentially transformative programs. Council members encouraged, as applicable by the research, efforts to measure success with endpoints other than “tenure”.
Jesus.
Oh hey, let’s not create too high of a barrier for ourselves. Let’s not set it at sustained tenured research careers THAT WERE THE VERY POINT OF THE GINTHER REPORT! Differential success of PIs at getting grant funding. How is this not intimately tied to the tenure success of African-American academic scientists?
Failing grade, National Advisory Council. Failboat.
Data faker happily employed by the US Patent Office
January 26, 2015
via retraction watch we learn:
A Bijan Ahvazi has been working at the USPTO since at least 2008, and today a source confirmed that it was the same person who was the subject of last October’s ORI report. Ahvazi was found to have faked five different images in three different papers, two of which have been retracted.
The Notice of ORI finding appeared in October of 2014.
Based on the report of an investigation conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and additional analysis by ORI in its oversight review, ORI found that Dr. Bijan Ahvazi, former Director of the Laboratory of X-ray Crystallography, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), NIH, engaged in research misconduct in research supported by the Intramural Program at NIAMS, NIH.
The Notice shows that the offenses for which Ahvazi was convicted date to 2004 and 2006. One doesn’t have to assume that much to figure out that he was busted and then had to look for a new job somewhere between 2006 and 2008. It took until 2014 for his fraud to come to light via the official ORI mechanisms. Presumably, although we don’t know for sure, the investigation was confidential up until it reached its formal conclusions which may have permitted him to avoid telling the US Patent and Trade Office about his little whoopsie? I dunno, do you think the USPTO would hire a data fraud as a patent examiner if they knew about it? One thinks not.
__
p.s. apparently a co-author of this data faker died under bizarre circumstances in 2003.
Say, what about the diversity of intramural scientists at the NIH?
February 21, 2014
While I’m getting all irate about the pathetic non-response to the Ginther report, I have been neglecting to think about the intramural research at NIH.
From Biochemme Belle:
Berg posts data on NIH Intramural funding
February 5, 2014
Jeremy Berg has a new column up at ASBMB Today which examines the distribution of NIH intramural funding. Among other things, he notes that you can play along at home via searching RePORTER using the ZIA activity code (i.e., in place of R01, R21, etc). At first blush you might think “WOWZA!”. The intramural lab is pretty dang flush. If you think about the direct costs of an extramural R01 grant – the full modular is only $250K per year. So you would need three awards (ok, the third one could be an R21) just to clear the first bin. But there are interesting caveats sprinkled throughout Berg’s comments and in the first comment to the piece. Note the “Total Costs”? Well, apparently there is an indirect costs rate within the IRPs and Berg comments that it is so variable that it is hard to issue anything similar to a negotiated extramural IDC rate for the entire NIH Intramural program. The comment from an ex-IRP investigator points to more issues. There may be some shared costs inserted into a given PI’s apparent budget that this PI has no control over. Whether this is part of the overhead or an overhead-like cost….or maybe a cost shard across one IC’s IRP…who knows?
We also don’t know what a given PI has to pay for out of his or her ZIA allocation. What are animal housing costs like? Are they subsidized for certain ICs’ IRPs? For certain labs? Who is a PI and who is a staff scientist of some sort within the IRPs? Do these status’ differ? Are they comparable to extramural lab operations? I know for certain sure that people who are more or less the equivalent of an extramural Assistant/Associate Professor in a soft money job category exist within the NIH IRPs without being considered a PI with their own ZIA allocation. So that means that a “PI” on the chart that Berg presents may in fact be equivalent to 2-3 PIs out here in extramural land. (And yes, I understand that some of the larger extramural labs similarly have several people who would otherwise be heading their own lab all subsumed within the grants awarded to one BigCheez PI.)
With that said, however, the IRP is supposed to be special. As Berg notes
The IRP mission statement asserts that the IRP should “conduct distinct, high-impact laboratory, clinical, and population-based research” and that it should support research that “cannot be readily funded or accomplished in traditional academia.”
So by one way of looking at it, we shouldn’t be comparing the IRP scientists to ourselves. They should be different.
Even if we think of IRP investigators as not much different from ourselves, I’m having difficulty making any sense of these numbers. It is nice to see them, but it is really hard to compare to what is going on with extramural grant funding.
Perhaps of greater value is the analysis Berg presents for whether NIH’s intramural research is feeling their fair share of the budgetary pain.
In 2003, when I became an NIH institute director, the overall NIH appropriation was $26.74 billion, while the overall intramural program consumed $2.56 billion, or 9.6 percent. In fiscal 2013, the overall NIH appropriation was $29.15 billion, and the intramural share had grown to $3.26 billion, or 11.2 percent.
Some of this growth is because of ongoing intramural activities, such as those involving the NIH Clinical Center, where, like at other hospitals, costs are very hard to contain below rates of inflation, or because of new activities, such as the NIH Chemical Genomics Center. The IRP is particularly expensive in terms of taxpayer dollars, because it is difficult to leverage the federal support to the IRP with funds from other sources as occurs in the extramural community.
So I guess that would be “no”. No the IRP, in aggregate, is not sharing the pain of the flatlined budget. There is no doubt that some of the individual components of the various IRPs are. It is inevitable. Previously flush budgets no doubt being reduced. Senior folk being pushed out. Mid and lower level employees being cashiered. I’m sure there are counter examples. But as a whole, it is clear that the IRP is being protected, inevitably at the expense of R-mech extramural awards.
SfN 2013: The Government Shutdown Edition
October 7, 2013
As you all know, the annual meetings of the academic scientific societies are a great place to interact with the Program Staff of your most relevant NIH Institutes and Centers. The past few years of budget flatlines, some concern over junketeering in other Government agencies and most painfully the sequester has already had an impact.
It isn’t only the Program Staff either. Many of you will have colleagues, as I do, that work at various federal research installations including the NIH Intramural Research programs of each IC. Their travel has been restricted as well.
The government shutdown comes at a bad time for the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience which is scheduled for November 9-13, 2013.
@inbabyattachmode just alerted me to the first sign of doom.
A satellite meeting hosted by NIDA has been cancelled.
NIDA SfN Mini-Convention
Friday, November 8, 2013
CANCELED
Belt up, scientists. This ride is getting bumpy.
Is an NIH intramural postdoc worth it?
July 16, 2012
In your field, does it come with any particular value? Good or bad?
Is there something about the “NIH name on the CV” that advantages a trainee?
Are there critical connections of lasting worth? Or perhaps critical career opportunities- the K22 or the chance to stay intramural for ever?
Are there other Universities or research institutes that are more valuable?
Or are you best off just going lab by lab, with no particular concern for the host institution?
A letter to the blog wanted to know and I can’t offer more than anecdotes and a dose of “it depends”, both of which are not helpful. Any thoughts, Dear Reader?
In the latest round of “Do it to Julia!” we have the attention turning to the Intramural Research programs of the various ICs of the NIH. A comment over at RockTalk:
It is only fair that we apply the same rules to our intramural colleagues and administrators with large numbers of support staff/ budget. Are they being scrutinized by their peers for efficiency and non-overlap?
The impression in the extramural community is that a number of boondoggles exist in Bethesda and beyond.
triggered this response from Intramural PR flack Wanjek:
As you know, part of the mission of the intramural program is to conduct, in government laboratories, creative and innovative biomedical research that cannot easily be performed in academic research settings. Over the past 60 years, a rigorous, multi-level external peer review process has evolved to ensure that this intramural mission is fulfilled and it has been demonstrated repeatedly that this approach to review is competitive in assuring the highest quality research and training.
This triggered some skepticism in the comments including from Jeremy Berg who commented, in part:
Some extremely high-quality research is performed within the intramural program, but the notion that much of this research “is not being done or could not be done elsewhere” seems hard to support. In addition, intramural research budgets are, in general, quite generous.
And therein lies our discussion point for the day, people. For your fields of study, 1) do you know any Intramural players and 2) do you think their contributions represent any unique studies that “cannot easily” be done in the extramural setting? If you do see unique science being done, any specificity as to why it couldn’t be done extramurally is welcome.
As far as the cost goes, well, Jeremy Berg has a suggestion:
Information about the investigators in the intramural program is available through NIH Reporter (via Project Numbers containing “ZIA”).
Happy searching….
DrugMonkey 