Monday, June 19, 2017

Open Opportunities to Do Collaborative Research

NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Blog
June 14, 2017
The National Institutes of Health is the world's biggest public funder of biomedical research, investing more than $32 billion each year—and a sizable amount of that money can be tapped by mental health and behavioral science researchers, especially those who are interested in collaborating with other disciplines.

 Several major initiatives welcome a transdisciplinary perspective, even if on the surface they don't sound terribly psychological. Among them are the All of Us/Precision Medicine Initiative, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) and the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) program.
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Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Journals’ Retreat From Data-Sharing Mandate Puts Onus on Universities and Government

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Paul Basken
June 12, 2017
A year ago the world’s leading medical-journal editors announced plans to require their authors to share with other scientists the data associated with their published articles about clinical trials.
Those editors have now backed off, and instead are predicting an even longer wait before such a mandate actually comes to pass.
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Monday, June 12, 2017

NIH Abandons Plan to Limit Per-Person Grant Awards

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Paul Basken
June 8, 2017
Facing protests from senior scientists, including members of its own advisory board, the National Institutes of Health on Thursday abandoned a plan to help younger researchers by imposing a general three-grant limit.
Instead, the NIH is moving forward with a more complicated formula in which scientists who win a first grant under a program designed to aid first-time applicants will get priority for their second grant.
"We are shifting the approach quite substantially," the NIH’s director, Francis S. Collins, told a gathering of his advisory panel, a collection of about 15 senior academic researchers that largely opposed his first plan.
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Friday, May 26, 2017

Lawmakers Show Sympathy for Trump Plan to Squeeze Research Costs

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Paul Basken
May 25, 2017
When the Ohio University economist Richard Vedder thinks of his counterparts at Harvard, he sees more than just a great research university.

 He sees shiny marble floors.

 Such high-end decor is a signal, Mr. Vedder told lawmakers Wednesday on Capitol Hill, that the federal government spends too much money on the extraneous costs surrounding university research.
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Thursday, May 18, 2017

NIH Is Firm on Plan to Limit Per-Person Grant Awards

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Paul Basken
May 17, 2017
Despite facing protests, the National Institutes of Health promised Wednesday to move ahead with a plan to impose a general limit of three major grants per researcher, persuaded by data linking quantity to declining effectiveness.
"We are determined to take some action now that we have this data," the NIH’s director, Francis S. Collins, told a House appropriations subcommittee. "When you’ve seen that data," he added after the hearing, "you can’t just walk away and say, ‘Oh, that’s fine.’"
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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Called to the White House, Business Leaders Attest to NIH’s Value

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Paul Basken
May 9, 2017
Not even two months ago, the Trump administration shocked the biomedical research community by proposing an 18-percent cut to the budget of the National Institutes of Health.
On Monday at the White House, that attitude began to look like ancient history.
Ushered into the Executive Mansion by a contingent of biomedical industry chiefs, NIH leaders spent two hours with top administration officials — followed by a visit with President Trump himself — carefully explaining the economic and human-health importance of the federal investment in medical science.
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Monday, May 1, 2017

A Worrisome Harbinger of Changes in Copyright Law

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Pamela Samuelson
April 23, 2017
With all the dysfunction in the White House and Capitol Hill this year, you might think that the copyright bills pending before Congress do not need your attention. Think again. Momentum is building for three of these measures, and their impact on institutions of higher education will not be welcome.
The most likely of the bills to pass (and scheduled for a vote this week) is the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act of 2017. It has bipartisan support from 32 cosponsors in the House, and the endorsement of three key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill calls for the Register of Copyrights to be a presidential appointee for a 10-year term, subject to Senate confirmation. This bill has already been reported out of the House Judiciary Committee.
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