As we pass the millennium, at the end of a century filled with immense advances in science, technology, engineering, and medicine, we stand on the verge of yet further vast strides in the understanding of Nature. Through the miracle of modern molecular biology and associated sciences we shall see further control over health matters, over disease. Shortly, perhaps we shall gain understanding of perception, of memory. The memories of great scholars and scientists may be tapped and recorded like the present transfer of data from one computer to another. We shall see the total synthesis of living forms from abiogenic materials. There is no limit.
The miraculous modern advances in medical practice are a direct product of generous research funding by our federal government. Modern biomedical research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH ) and National Science Foundation ( NSF) has made very substantial improvements to human health since the end of World War II. We may reasonably expect these advances to continue to improve human health in the foreseeable future, given continued national prosperity and government financial support.
However, as with any domestic endeavor where generous federal funding is available, there are unfavorable aspects that detract from the many benefits. We see erosions of American traditions in our schools and of trust in ever so many institutions.
Students are being led into odd and devious ways. The radicalization of our culture is typified by the termination in 1990 of a required first year course "Western Culture" at Leland Stanford University, to be replaced with the course "Culture, Ideas, and Values" focused on racism, sexism, and colonialism, a class without grades devoted to self-esteem. The University of Chicago classics tradition is similarly politicized, dumbing down with emphasis on race, "gender", and class to retain student enrollment.
In science education a change in basic philosophy has occurred. Where once student research was conceived as a means of teaching experimental approaches to a problem, student research today is a lower paid part of goal-oriented research of the professor, the principal investigator.
We are entering a new age where past standards of conduct are in flux. Hucksters have sold their wares since antiquity; politicians have gained sway over us with their glib assurances of better times. We are inured to the mendacity of politicians, the duplicity of business practices, and the race for riches in some professions. Fortunately engineering practices have not become quite so shady, or bridges and buildings would collapse and airplanes fall from the sky. Science has also remained relatively free from lies and fraud.
Another blight on scholarship and academic duties now developing is that of accountability. One must account their efforts periodically, in various annual reports to their organizations and, more importantly, to their research funding sources. Gone are the days when Nobel Prize laureate (1952) Archer J. P. Martin, while a Robert A. Welch Foundation professor at the University of Houston, asked to provide his annual research report, wrote "I was thinking". The age-old tenure system protecting the scholar and teacher from political abuse is being replaced and scholarship de-emphasized in favor of accountability.
We hear "Research is a business. Educating graduate students is a business". We see the intrusion of sharp business practices into our education system under the guise of accountability. Business management systems are being designed to measure productivity of individuals and of departments. All research, teaching, and patient care efforts must be quantified. The number and frequency of grants from NIH, the number of dollars, the number and prestige of publications, and the number of citations to papers are among the items to be measured. Productivity may then be determined by some formula that weights each factor to achieve the desired ends.
We are beginning to see shady practices in the conduct of government-funded biomedical research such that some awareness of the problems must be had by those involved in such ventures.
It is my goal here to describe a view of the present status of biomedical research and to outline some of the problems that students and junior researchers may face in their entry into modern funded biomedical research. There are four simple situations that attract our attention, four items that each lead to results impacting biomedical research successes:
(1) Despite generous research funding there still is inadequate funding to support the present system and all who seek to follow a biomedical research career. The limited resources available thus force the independent investigator to spend inordinate amounts of time and effort merely seeking funds. In the intense competition for funds it appears in some cases that more time is used seeking funds than in conducting funded research.
RESULT: Biomedical research faculty have less or even no time for teaching and for other traditional academic duties.
(2) There are strong recruitment programs aimed at increasing the number of students entering research programs at medical schools and universities. The demand for assistants to perform laboratory work that supports renewed research funding requires more entries than available funding can support.
RESULT: Biomedical research students may be held inordinate lengths of time to complete their graduate degrees merely to support their mentor's research program. Too many such students become "hands" and do not attain independent research careers.
(3) Present federal research funding arrangements have produced a dependent class of faculty whose allegiance is to their funding agency and not to their academic institution.
RESULT: Funded investigators refuse unwanted academic duties and teaching and flaunt their successful research funding that accords them all sorts of privileges not available to their unfunded peers. Administrations accede to these arrangements because of the sharing of government largesse.
(4) Institutional administrations strongly promote dependency on generous federal research funding, as the indirect costs and investigators' salaries put on the research grant budget free equivalent funds from university budgets for administration's own use in other matters.
RESULT: Unfunded faculty may not receive salary increases, adequate office and laboratory space, and other amenities of faculty membership. Tenure may be affected.
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