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NIH dependency Posted by Peter Fiske at 01AM on 02/19/07 | Categories: None | 6 comments
"You can’t tell me that NIH and NSF are the ONLY customers out there. ...There are LOTS of other customers.
Not only are there several federal agencies that fund research besides NSF and NIH, but there are a myriad of foundations and private organizations.... One can build cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) with private industry.
The moral of this story: diversify, diversify, diversify."
I think some of these comments are overly simplistic and have not taken into account several factors:
Researchers have in fact already "diversified, diversified, diversified". ANY funding agency you can think of, public or private (DoD, DARPA, ONR, HHMI, SLOAN, etc.), have funding success rates at least as daunting as the NSF or the NIH (now at around 20%), some much lower. There are many researchers from engineering departments, national labs, small and large companies, waiting in long lines to get this more applied funding. More homework needs to be done here.
The quest for "diverse" funding sources (outside NSF/NIH) have led many research managers to turn to Congressional plus-ups (pork barrel spending). This practice has increased dramatically over the last 10 or so years and has led to a very inefficient use of research spending with little technical oversight. There is some action on the Hill to rein this in however, so now this approach to funding diversification is being questioned.
CRADAs are often more trouble from a legal perspective than they are worth. Corporations are usually stingy with their research funds and typically bargain from the position of the "research for free, and all the patent rights". Also, industry support seems to be on the decline: "Industry Support for Academic Research Fell for a 3rd Straight Year in 2004" http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/05/2006050201n.htm
...I could go on...
The upshot is one needs to do more homework on the budget numbers (success rates) concerning the overall R&D funding portfolio (both basic and applied) before making suggestions like "The moral of this story: diversify, diversify, diversify." I think the suggestion for basic researchers to give the applied research side of their work some thought is a good one, but if there is a funding bottleneck at the NSF/NIH, then turning those numerous and under-funded researchers loose on applied R&D funding is somewhat reckless from a science policy perspective, though clearly not the intention.
FYI, this link shows some funding success rates for the NSF that are plotted in an interesting manner: See slide 5: "Decrease in proposal success rates coincides with increases in proposal submissions and average award size/duration"
www.nsf.gov/attachments/103193/public/AkayIPAMMupdate.ppt
Just my two cents..
Bob