I'm in the process of tracking down some data to help me figure out what's really going on with the NIH grant acceptance rates. In the process, I had an interesting conversation with a friend at NIH yesterday. He tells me that he's seen some data that suggest that a lot of the new applications are not from new, fi... read more

**The Problem:** The NIH’s budget doubled over the past few years, and the NSF is currently working on a budget doubling of its own. Despite this vast influx of new federal funding, approval rates for grant proposals at the NIH have plummeted, and similar things are happening at NSF. Nobel laureate Robert Wein... read more

On the subject of cultivating leadership in scientists, the following showed up in my mailbox recently: > The NPA is pleased to announce the Postdoc Leadership Mentoring Project, sponsored by the NPA and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This innovative program seeks to connect experienced leaders in the postdoctor... read more

The NY Times today had an article today about some new findings on the relationship between education and lifespan. This paper estimates that each additional year of education increases lifespan by as much as 1.7 years and shows interesting evidence that the relationship is causal. Those long years in grad schoo... read more

We've seen the effects of the NIH budget doubling on the grad student population. What about postdocs? The NSF publishes an annual headcount of postdocs in academic institutions, and sure enough, the number of postdocs went up over the budget doubling period, 1998-2003. However, once you dig into the numbers a ... read more