Opinion: The National Institutes of Health needs to better balance funding distributions among US institutions
Opinion: The National Institutes of Health needs to better balance funding distributions among US institutions
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意见：美国国立卫生研究院需要更好地平衡美国机构之间的资金分配
DOI：
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发表时间：
2019
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
W. P. Wahls
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
W. P. Wahls
NIH是美国生物医学研究的联邦管理机构。纳税人资助NIH;国家卫生研究院支持对疾病的基础生物学、病因学和治疗的研究; 2这些研究的收益将返还给纳税人。这是一个庞大而复杂的企业，但其核心是两个基本原则。NIH有义务以公平、公正的方式向全国合格的研究人员分配研究赠款和拨款，并最大限度地提高纳税人的投资回报。
美国国立卫生研究院应该重新考虑如何发放资金。研究表明，研究产出并不随着研究项目资助的数量而线性增长，最大的回报率是在中等水平的资助下实现的。图片来源：Dave Cutler（艺术家）
但为了履行这些义务，NIH必须在机构之间建立更平衡的资金分配。在这里，我描述了为什么需要这样的变化，并提出了一个具体的机制，他们可以如何实施。
美国国立卫生研究院院长弗朗西斯柯林斯已经认识到，“美国生物医学研究人员目前并没有反映国家人口的人口统计”，“招募和保留一套不同的思想和方法是至关重要的，以利用国家的完整的智力资本”（1）。这些系统性问题部分源于按种族（2）、性别（3）、年龄（4）、机构（5）和州（6）分组的研究人员获得NIH资助的机会不平等。
以各种方式分组的研究人员之间的赠款申请成功率和奖金规模的差异影响了赠款的去向，导致资金的严重倾斜分布。例如，不到三分之一的申请人在五年内获得了NIH研究项目资助申请的资助（7），在成功的申请人中，少数人强烈反对。
[1] 1电子邮件：WahlsWayneP{at} uams.edu。
[1]：#xref-corresp-1-1
The NIH is the federal steward of biomedical research in the United States. Taxpayers fund the NIH; the NIH supports research into the underlying biology, etiology, and treatment of diseases; and benefits of that research are returned to taxpayers. This is a large and complex enterprise, but at its core are two fundamental principles. The NIH is obligated to distribute its research grants and grant dollars in a fair and impartial manner among qualified investigators nationwide and to maximize the return on taxpayers’ investments.
The NIH should rethink how it doles out funding. Studies indicate that research output does not grow linearly with the amount of research project grant support—and that the greatest rates of return are achieved with intermediate levels of funding. Image credit: Dave Cutler (artist).
But to meet these obligations, the NIH must establish a better-balanced distribution of funding among institutions. Here, I describe why such changes are needed and propose a specific mechanism for how they could be implemented.
The director of the NIH, Francis Collins, has recognized that “the US biomedical research workforce does not currently mirror the nation’s population demographically” and that “recruiting and retaining a diverse set of minds and approaches is vital to harnessing the complete intellectual capital of the nation” (1). These systemic problems stem, in part, from unequal access to NIH grant support among investigators grouped by race (2), gender (3), age (4), institution (5), and state (6).
The differences in grant application success rates and award sizes among investigators grouped in various ways affect where the grant dollars go, leading to heavily skewed distributions of funding. For example, less than one in three applicants get any of their NIH research project grant applications funded over a five-year period (7), and among successful applicants, a small minority are strongly …
[↵][1]1Email: WahlsWayneP{at}uams.edu.
[1]: #xref-corresp-1-1