NIH By the Numbers: Challenge Grants, Stem Cell Comments, and Conflict of Interest Rules
A flood of grant applications for Recovery Act funds, a heap of comments on the proposed stem cell policy, and feedback on how to manage conflicts of interest among researchers—here’s a look at some of the key numbers related to the big policy stories at the National Institutes of Health:
20,894: The total number of Challenge Grants applications received by the NIH.
At least $200 million of Recovery Act funds will support these new grants. These applications come on top of the 16,312 regular applications received for the current funding cycle. Some 18,000 reviewers will help read and score them all, a workload that has NIH Center for Scientific Review Director Antonio Scarpa worried about the time it will take for each reader and the inevitable low acceptance rate. The projects that are funded will generate jobs, grow the economy, and support the search for cures.
49,015: The total number of comments the NIH received on its draft Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research.
Jocelyn Kaiser at ScienceInsider reports that the Institutes’ policy chief estimates the amount is roughly equivalent to when the NIH issued draft guidelines on the same issue in 1999.
$5,000: The threshold for earnings that should trigger mandatory disclosure under financial conflict of interest rules for NIH-funded researchers, as recommended by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Association of American Universities.
The two major academic associations, which both represent significant proportions of the institutions where scientists conduct NIH-funded research, submitted their joint comments in a letter Wednesday. NIH grantees are currently obliged to report a financial interest if they earn more than $10,000 in income or own more than $10,000 in stock plus 5 percent interest in a company, but the AAMC and AAU believe the threshold is too low to ensure research integrity. The recommendations were in response to the NIH’s request for comments on promoting objectivity in research. Patti Tereskerz recently explained the complexity of managing the conflicts of interest that result from the necessary mix of public and private research funding in Science Progress—including those that arise from corporations funding research through foundations and nonprofit institutes.
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