[[{“value”:”It seems the Trump proposal to simply cut overhead to fifteen percent will not stand up in the courts, at least not without Congressional approval? Nonetheless a few of you have asked me what I think of the idea. My preferred reforms for the NIH include the following: 1. Cap pre-specified overhead at 25 percent,
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It seems the Trump proposal to simply cut overhead to fifteen percent will not stand up in the courts, at least not without Congressional approval? Nonetheless a few of you have asked me what I think of the idea.
My preferred reforms for the NIH include the following:
1. Cap pre-specified overhead at 25 percent, down from a range running up to 60 percent.
2. Encourage more coverage of overhead in the proposals themselves, where the researchers are accountable for how the overhead funds are spent. Severely limit how much the “overhead” cross-subsidizes other university functions, as is currently the case.
3. Fund a greater number of proposals, with the money coming from overhead reductions, as outlined in #1 and #2.
4. Set up a new, fully independent biomedical research arm of the federal government, based on DARPA-like principles. In fact this was seriously proposed a few years ago, with widespread (but insufficient) support.
I would note a few additional points, which have been covered in earlier MR posts over the years:
5. The NIH could not get its act together during Covid to make fast grants with sufficient rapidity during a time of crisis. They performed much worse than did say the NSF.
6. A while back the NIH set up a program to make riskier grants. The program did not in fact make riskier grants.
7. The NIH killed the idea of an independent DARPA-like biomedical research agency, fearing it would limit the size and influence of the NIH itself.
8. The submission forms, their length, and the associated processes are absurd. Whether or not the costs there are high in an absolute sense, it is a sign the current NIH is far too obsessed with process, as happens to just about every mature bureaucracy.
At this point it is obvious that the NIH cannot reform itself. It is also obvious that a slower, technocratic approach just gives the interest groups — in this case it is “the states” most of all — time to mobilize to protect the current NIH. There are universities in many Congressional districts and a fair amount of money at stake.
I do not per se favor a move to fifteen percent overhead, as I do understand the associated costs on scientific research. Nonetheless I take very seriously the possibility that a radical “thoughtless” cut now stands some chance of getting us to where we ought to be in the longer run, especially since subsequent administrations will get further cracks at this problem. They can up overhead to 25 percent, and set up the new DARPA-H. I just don’t see why that is impossible, and it may not even be unlikely. So what exactly is your discount rate and risk aversion here?
I feel the defenses of the NIH I am reading do not take the entire broader analysis seriously enough. They do not take sufficiently seriously that the writers themselves have failed to adequately reform the NIH. And over time, without serious reform, the bureaucratic stultification will only get worse.
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Economics, Medicine, Political Science, Uncategorized
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