As Young Researchers Struggle, High-Risk, High-Reward Research Suffer

Today’s early-career researchers have a much harder time of it than their predecessors, according to a high-powered scientific panel convened by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and led by Thomas Cech, current president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It takes longer to train and getting grants is far tougher: In 1980, for example, 86% of new investigators received a grant on their first try; by 2000 that figure dropped to about 59%; and in 2007, only 28% of first submissions were funded. “Time spent submitting repeated grant applications is a distraction from the research endeavor itself and poorly utilizes the potential of this highly creative resource,” panel members note. To make matters even worse, the current crop of early-career principal investigators lag about five years behind their older colleagues from the start —the average age of a first grant jumping from 37 to 42 years in the past few decades. It’s likely, panel members say, that older and poorer early-career faculty will communicate their frustration to students, directly or indirectly, dissuading them from science careers. “This is a very bad strategy for building the nation’s future research enterprise,” they caution.

Tight budgets not only damaged morale, the constant hunt for dollars is fostering conservative thinking, making researchers and funding agencies alike shy away from high-risk, high-reward research. People who are afraid to take chances are unlikely to come up with the kind of breakthrough results that transform a field. “Riskier research should be nurtured,” panel members advise. “Science benefits greatly from work that has the potential to disrupt complacency and conventional thinking.”

The American Academy’s recently released report, ARISE: Advancing Research In Science and Engineering not only documents the daunting obstacles facing today’s young scientists and the impact they’re having on innovative research, it calls for a series of critical changes in the way science is funded. For starters, they say universities should pay a greater proportion of faculty salaries and lab costs, shifting money away from brick and mortar and into the pockets of promising investigators. Federal agencies are advised to provide ample, long-term seed funds to early-career faculty, enabling them to explore new ideas. The grant application and review processes needs to be strengthened, high-risk proposals suffer in a stressed peer-review system not equipped to appreciate them. Also urged is the provision of “trustworthy, convenient, and affordable child care” to young parents as they establish their research careers” as well as tenure timeouts if needed.

Young microbiologist, Derrick Brazill who eavesdrops on cross-talking amoebas in his laboratory at Hunter College, City University of New York, says the report is “right on.” “Junior researchers spend most of their first few years writing grants. Add teaching responsibilities to that and there isn’t much time or energy left over for research.” Brazill notes that graduate students and post docs are increasingly discouraged by what they see and often come to him for advice. He suggests “Having special pools of funding specifically for beginning investigators to help ease the burden of those first few [research] years.”

Bonnie Bassler, who listens in on bacterial chatter in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, sympathizes with early-career researchers like Brazill, noting that the “ARISE report provides a frank assessment of the danger we face if…we lose our most promising scientists from the basic science arena.”

Microbial ecologist Tom P. Curtis, who works at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in the UK suggests that young US researchers “Take a look over the pond where we have special earmarked schemes for new investigators and a wide range of fellowships for young researchers.”

However, this may not last for much longer according to a special report and editorial in the 26 June 2008 issue of Nature. “British scientists have had it pretty good this past decade,” they note, but right now the government is rethinking its priorities and highly innovative research —the kind often done by young researchers— may yield to that which brings an immediate financial return. It is a “top priority,” they say, “to ensure that the government fully appreciates the added value of basic science and the costs of its neglect.” Or, as the ARISE panel cautions: “Regardless of the size of he pie, strategic support for early-career investigators and potentially transformative research will be integral to the long-term competitiveness of our economy.”

The ARISE report can be downloaded at www.amacad.org/ARISE

Marcia Stone is a science writer based in New York City. More of her work can be seen on www.mstoneworks.net