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Howard Hughes Funds High-Risk, High-Return Research
It’s old news that NIH funding has been flat for four years, and that the Institutes have lost 6 percent of their purchasing power to inflation over that period. The steep incline in funding that doubled NIH funding between 1998 and 2003, followed by the abrupt plateau, has subsequently left many medical researchers in fierce competition for limited resources. Some members of the community are particularly concerned that younger scientists are leaving the field because they cannot secure grant funding to continue to their work.
This week, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute stepped in with $600 million in grant funding to 56 biomedical researchers pursuing high-risk, high-return work.
In previous decades, the federal government was a significant supporter of bold R&D ideas that had the potential to fail. But as research agencies lose their ability to fund more than a small percentage of grant requests, the review process becomes more conservative. As Science Progress adviser Tom Kalil explains in his report on “A National Innovation Agenda“:
It may take only one reviewer on a peer review panel to block an innovative but risky research proposal. In this environment, researchers become cautious and conservative and propose incremental advances based on previous results. They do not “swing for the fences” by pursuing ideas that will lead to breakthrough technologies or open up new lines of scientific inquiry.
He also points out that the Rising Above the Gathering Storm report recommends allocating 8 percent of federal research to high-risk, high-return projects. Some of them will fail; some will succeed spectacularly. But all of them will help scientists learn more about their fields, and the support will foster a climate of innovative thinking—what the National Science Board calls “transformative research.”
So here’s to the bold women and men who now have the support of Howard Hughes to swing for the fences.
Comments on this article
Having watched cancer ravage my father, it is exciting to read about the work you are funding for medical research.
As important as medical research is,,,,their are those of us with the same level of passion for history and seek to partner with a foundation willing to support the research of the stories of World War II veterans. I seek to find and talk with as many veterans that are still alive, compiling, sorting, and documenting their stories.
I am sending this letter of introduction in hopes that your passion for history, American History, thru the eyes of the soldier, is half as important as your work in medical history. I have sat down with some of these men and am always in awe by the stories they share, let me please document as many of these stories that are able to be told by the very soldiers that are still alive to share the very history of World War II.
Joseph Pisani
June 8th, 2008 at 7:54 pm727 421 8211
3317 Coldwell Dr, Holiday Florida, 34691
jpisani345@yahoo.com