Paula Stephan gave a great talk on the NIH doubling this week here at Harvard. Here are her slides. To recap, shortly after the NIH's annual budget doubled from $14 to $28 billion, the number of new applications for R01 grants increased dramatically, and as a result, acceptance rates for grants plummeted. Lots... read more

I am scheduled to give a seminar in 2 weeks on a topic that I have less familiarity with than I'd like. The people from whom I am supposed to get a crucial data set for the talk aren't returning my calls. My backup plan has been scooped by a seminar in the same series on Monday. So I'm a little panicked. Not *to... read more

I'm heading up to NBER next week to spend a month working with Richard Freeman. One of the things I will be looking into (assuming I can get some data sets) is what's going on at NIH with the falling approval rates for R01 grants. Expect lots of interesting things. One symptom of the current troubles that I rec... read more

The Chronicle has articles today about the president's proposed budgets for NIH and NSF. A few interesting things: * As best I can tell, the president is proposing a 1.2% increase in the overall NIH budget. The Chronicle calls the glass half-empty. Their headline: "NIH Budget for 2008 Represents a Cut From Wha... read more

Picking up on the thread (of indignation) surrounding the pricing of science journals, let me relate something that I experienced back in the mid-90's when I served on an advisory board for an (unnamed) three-letter scientific society. I was the youngest member of this august committee and the subject of journa... read more