SCIENCE, CULTURED

Nerd Busters

GQ’s new “Rock Stars of Science” campaign should give not just disease sufferers, but America’s scientists, hope.

RESEARCH ETHICS

Can We Bank on Objectivity?

Managing financial conflicts of interest is a complicated policy matter, as researchers and their institutions often receive both public and private funding to support research that leads to new treatments. But research also indicates these conflicts are widespread and ingrained. How far should we go in addressing the issue?

NIH to Help Bridge the “Valley of Death” for Rare and Neglected Diseases

Yesterday, the National Institutes of Health announced the creation of its new Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases Program. TRND’s goal is to bolster drug development for rare diseases that affect less than 200,000 Americans as well as neglected diseases [...]

Don’t Bury the Next Generation of Researchers Under Billions in NIH Funding

The NIH has about $10 billion from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to pour into job-creating grants and research infrastructure. The Scientist reports that the new Challenge Grants program will direct $200 million of that money towards areas of high-priority [...]

Quick Takes on Science and Tech in the President’s Budget

A quick glance at a couple early takes on R&D funding in President Obama’s budget request outline for FY2010: Science Insider: NIH details are sketchy, but include increases; NSF would see 8.5 percent bump; more for scientific facilities though DOE’s [...]

Buckets of Jobs

Last week acting NIH director Raynard Kington described the outlines of the Institutes’ participation in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, popularly known as the stimulus package. New NIH funding totals $10.4 billion. Conservatives with a limited understanding [...]

Down Payment on a Scientific Future

Several science budgets fared well in the Recovery and Reinvestment Act compromise, but cross your fingers that we won’t need additional resources to combat bird flu.

Senate Multiplies Biomed Stimulus

The Senate is doubling down on the House proposal to support biomedical research and innovation with the recovery and reinvestment package—and then some. The Senate version of the stimulus bill originally provided $3.5 billion in funds for the National Institutes [...]

FINANCING SCIENCE

Change Young Scientists Can Believe In

Increased federal funding of basic research must be accompanied by thoroughgoing reform of the grant process to create a new generation of American researchers.

Data Bank: NIH Funding By the Numbers

As we wrote last week, the current stimulus legislation moving through the House can help boost the economy by providing funds that support scientific research. In particular, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would allocate $2 billion for biomedical research [...]

FINANCING SCIENCE

Where to Spend Our Research Dollars

Innovation to boost economic prosperity requires new ways to get more funding to our most talented young researchers.

WEISS'S NOTEBOOK

Quiet Heroes

The United States boasts a huge corps of public-servant scientists devoted to going where the evidence takes them and who, as of Wednesday, will for the first time in years be respected by the highest officials in the land for what they do.

INNOVATION

Recovering Innovation, Innovating to Recover

The proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act recognizes that science, technology and innovation have long provided the foundation for America’s prosperity, and are crucial to boosting an economy in crisis.

Varmus on Funding for Disease-Specific Research

The Scientist this month features an excerpt from Nobelist and former National Institutes of Health director Harold Varmus’s forthcoming book, The Art and Politics of Science. In it he describes some of the subtly to accounting for research money applied [...]

A Taxonomy of Scientific Appointments

The Washington rumor mill is buzzing with names of possible science appointees—and there are dozens of major science-related positions to fill. The questions appointees will face are an opportunity for a clear break with past approaches.

Ask the Expert Video: Rick Weiss on the Downward Slope of Biomed Research Funding

The flat-funding of the NIH since 2004 hasn’t really been flat. In fact, Weiss reminds readers that “the NIH research budget has actually now dipped to an inflation-adjusted level about 13 percent less than it was five years ago,” according to the AAAS. And to top it all off, the extreme difficultly of securing a first-time research grant is sending young scientists packing for jobs in other sectors.

Science Funding: an Investment, Not an Expenditure

Merril Goozner, a longtime Washington health and science gadfly who hosts the respected website gooznews.com, responded yesterday to my Monday posting about the negligent flat-funding of the National Institutes of Health. He makes the point that, bad as that policy has been, we should not forget that other important drivers of biomedical research and improved healthcare delivery have similarly suffered under recent Bush budgets. Read the rest of this post >

Where’s the Biomed Bailout?

Congress last week passed a continuing resolution that will keep the National Institutes of Health budget flat-out flat for the fifth year running. The policy is flat-out wrong, as Americans who have diseases that five or ten years from now should be curable are going to have to wait a lot longer.

HHS Rule Could Restrict Access to Contraception, Health Care…and Stem Cell Research

The Department of Health and Human Services to propose a rule that would ostensibly protect healthcare workers who object to performing abortion and sterilization procedures. The catch is that there are already federal laws in place that do just that. The regulation would instead open the door to denying patients access to all sorts of potentially controversial health care services. The comment period closes tomorrow.

Kicking the Doorstop on Open Access

Since April, researchers publishing work done with NIH support must submit manuscripts for access in a free database. The experiment is working, but large journal publishers aren’t satisfied with the results.