NIH study sections are broken
Mediocre scientists stroke their ego & have never proven their value
In a prior post and video, I described how the NIH is broken. Instead of having the best scientists fund the best science, it has mediocre study section members fund the most plodding, incremental and unambitious work. I cited an elegant analysis by Ioannidis that compares scientists who publish at least 1 paper (as first or last author) with 1000 citations — i.e. influential scientists— with those who work on study sections and there is poor overlap. Take a look.
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Worse, the NIH has gone all in on “woke” science. Many grants nod to racial or gender issues— even when it is irrelevant. DEI concepts dominate. There are thousands of NIH grants on the topics of diversity. Many are redundant, merely documenting things we already know: that it is bad to be poor or a minority or both. What is rarely done is offering useful solutions, and all this focus on diversity misses the fact that in many diseases— everyone needs help: rich and poor people, white people and black people— we need better therapies, period.
That DEI mentality has extended to the study section membership— the people who give out the grants
How do study sections create mediocre science? It’s that the nature of the review punishes a scientist more if someone does not like your views, than reward you if someone does. A single negative voice can tank an application, while a single vote of support can rarely sell it.
This incentivizes scientists to be very quiet— not commenting on topical issues, even when the stakes are massive. When schools were closed for 18 months in the US, many scientists who claimed to care about poor, minority kids — after all they had NIH grants in to tackle health disparities—went silent. They failed in their basic duty.
This essay written 10 years ago by Steven McKnight says it all.
First, even then he lamented the study section membership
And this gem— about the narrow scope of grant committees.
Now this week, we have heard nothing but the opposite. That pausing the NIH for even 1 day will halt progress. Let me give one example.
This essay came out today in Stat lamenting the fact that NIH is not funding cancer research. It says the “consequences could be dire.” It sounds bad. After all, as an oncologist, I want NIH to fund cancer research too.
I decided to PUBMED the author to see what NIH was not funding. I picked the first paper.
It was NIH funded! Here is the statement:
Ok, so the pause might mean we miss out on work like this. It is a pilot study of quality of life webpage. Wait, what is that conflict of interest, again?
One of the authors is the president of the company that makes this tool.
What the fuck? Why is the NIH funding a pilot study for a company? The company is going to make money from this. They should pay for their own study.
Let’s look at the paper. It shows that cancer survivors can use the computer— the web tool is feasible and acceptable.
But did anyone doubt that? Of course cancer patients can use the internet. They aren’t in a coma. This study teaches us literally nothing. The conflict of interest is glaring. Why is NIH funding this? It is precisely the mediocre, uninformative science that we should defund.
The problem with the NIH is that it is have never tried to fix this problem. Take 200 million dollars and randomize 100 million to give grants the usual way, take the other 100 million and implement a basic screen for grammar and spelling and then randomly pick the winners. You might be able to give out 1 extra grant because you can fire the NIH’s officer in the charge of the study section.
Follow both groups into the future. Measure the number of papers, citations, patents, and other metrics. Of course, I know these are imperfect metrics of science, but my hypothesis is that they will be a total wash— or the randomly given money might accidentally pick a truly ambitious and unique thinker, who will have tons of cites.
If it is a tie, or if the modified lottery arm wins, it would essentially mean the NIH’s gatekeeping is completely pointless. If NIH is a place of science, it should commit itself to the scientific method.
I am tired of seeing mediocre scientists complain about the NIH’s pause. I am going to a clever empirical analysis of this topic. More to come..
If you believe in what I am doing, please subscribe. We know the NIH won’t be funding this Substack.
This man is an investigative machine. Not that he had to dig that deep😂
"Mediocre scientists stroke their ego and have never proven their value."
Priceless, I lived it for decades. Perfect description of the so called scientists who work as "researchers" in pharma. Nothing but scientific henchmen hacks trying to deceive the public so venture capital and bigly farm ah can cash out.
The thing that always amazed me is how they go from being unemployed with no prospects, to petty, holier than thou tyrants when they find one of these fake science jobs. They are psychopaths.
I was attacked and threatened with violence in dangerous laboratory environments many times by these freaks, one of them works at the NIH today. Don't you dare make them look bad in the lab.
They flip back and forth like Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde, I called them the Eddie Haskels of science. Most of them don't even like chemistry or biology, I had one supervisor say to me once "you love this sh#t"....a grad from Scripps no less.