Howard Hughes Funds High-Risk, High-Return Research
It’s old news that NIH funding has been flat for four years, and that the Institutes have lost 6 percent of their purchasing power to inflation over that period. The steep incline in funding that doubled NIH funding between 1998 and 2003, followed by the abrupt plateau, has subsequently left many medical researchers in fierce competition for limited resources. Some members of the community are particularly concerned that younger scientists are leaving the field because they cannot secure grant funding to continue to their work.
This week, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute stepped in with $600 million in grant funding to 56 biomedical researchers pursuing high-risk, high-return work.
In previous decades, the federal government was a significant supporter of bold R&D ideas that had the potential to fail. But as research agencies lose their ability to fund more than a small percentage of grant requests, the review process becomes more conservative. As Science Progress adviser Tom Kalil explains in his report on “A National Innovation Agenda“:
It may take only one reviewer on a peer review panel to block an innovative but risky research proposal. In this environment, researchers become cautious and conservative and propose incremental advances based on previous results. They do not “swing for the fences” by pursuing ideas that will lead to breakthrough technologies or open up new lines of scientific inquiry.
He also points out that the Rising Above the Gathering Storm report recommends allocating 8 percent of federal research to high-risk, high-return projects. Some of them will fail; some will succeed spectacularly. But all of them will help scientists learn more about their fields, and the support will foster a climate of innovative thinking—what the National Science Board calls “transformative research.”
So here’s to the bold women and men who now have the support of Howard Hughes to swing for the fences.
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