More groundbreaking research funded by the NIH. It's sad to think about how much the US is going to lose with the arbitrary slashing and burning and purging.
Most research that is pointed towards important things does get funding from NIH. Most research fails. NIH has a bucket of money for every major issue facing the population. Just takes a few PhD's and a hypothesis to write a proposal.
That was a necessary correction, unfortunately. And if we were all honest and having open debates we could have avoided it entirely. So whichever side of the fence we're on, I hope we can at least learn from it and openly discuss things civilly.
It's all well and good to suggest that each program receiving funding gets a thorough review. Of course, that review needs to be by experts, to ensure it gets a fair shake. Who are the experts in the field? The odds that you can be an expert in the field (by publication count, let's say) without having already been funded by the NIH is pretty slim. So now your experts are also insiders.
That's going to be a big problem as very few insiders are going to be willing to rock the boat. Even if it's necessary.
Maybe you've got a good idea of how to solve this "good review requires experts, experts are very likely insiders, insiders are unlikely to rock the boat" problem. It would be wonderful if there was some solution, even if it was hard.
> Maybe you've got a good idea of how to solve this "good review requires experts, experts are very likely insiders, insiders are unlikely to rock the boat" problem.
You're the one who has identified this as a problem, shouldn't you be the one to suggest an alternative?
Couldn't at least part of the reviewing be done by foreign experts?
Having said that, this smells witch-hunty to me. The US can boast decades of excellence in medical and biological sciences, which in turn generates a massive windfall. Completely upending the architecture behind this dominance on the suspicion that a few hundred million bucks are less-than-optimally spent is a hell of a gambit, and even ignores all the higher-order effects that even that "spare change" bring about.
You've made at least 2-3 personal attacks against me while seemingly not even trying to address the problem that I highlighted. If that's your goal, OK. It definitely goes against the spirit of the rules here if not the letter.
Delaying the flu vaccine? Ok that's bad, sure.
It's also a real goalpost move and also doesn't address the technical problem "insiders going to inside" I raised in answer to the parent's paraphrased "I can't understand this, why is this necessary?"
I don't know that doing things this way is strictly necessary. But I also don't think it's reasonable to just hand-wave away or worse completely fail to even acknowledge much less actually address the insiders problem.
Q> Can you explain why the sledge hammer approach, removing funding for things wholesale and causing large amounts of destruction (both economic and health) is reasonable?
And your answer was
A> It looks like there is a problem with the current system, and changing something would be beneficial.
And, while I agree that the sentiment ("changing something would be beneficial") is fair... as an answer it falls squarely into "We should do something, this is something, so we should do this", which is categorically ridiculous. The way to approach these types of issues, where changing things can (and does) have real, significant impact on lots of people, is to come up with a plan and discuss what the impacts/tradeoffs are. It is _not_ to just do the first thing that comes to mind and then ignore the people who's lives your destroying.
It's simple, really. Make it so the experts have 0 leverage. Maybe have "the workers" make all the decisions! ??? Profit? :-) They tried this in Soviet Union...
I'm sure you have direct economic interests. Odds are good someone in your circle is type 1 diabetic, and helping that person will indirectly help you.
The important thing is that these things get funded. It doesn't matter what institute funds them. If an institute becomes stultified and corrupt, there's no reason to champion it over creating another.
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