|
This month, Natural Selections presents an interview with Sir Paul Nurse about his recently published Cell Op-Ed article, US Biomedical Research under Siege (January 13, 2006). The article outlines his views on the state of biomedical research in the US and proposes possible solutions for some of the threats and problems.
Natural Selections (NS): How did you get involved in writing this piece?
Paul Nurse (PN): I got involved because Cell approached me to say they were starting a new editorial series, and asked if I could write one. I thought it would be good to take on what was bothering me about biomedical research at the present time in the United States. Because I have worked most of my life in the UK, perhaps I could bring different perspectives to that issue—on how to fund research and make funding decisions, and the political implications of these. We’ve got to speak out about these issues because they are extremely important, and I think the US is in danger of losing its scientific eminence.
NS: What is the impact you hope the piece will have?
PN: There is nothing in it very different from what has been said by other people. It’s light on background information because I wanted to focus on the general principles and ideas and offer some solutions. I’m hoping the article will stimulate interest among working scientists. If it is thought useful, I might try to reformat it for the general public.
NS: One pressure on science that you mention is the dwindling funds—there will be fewer grants funded. What impact do you think these developments will have on the university?
PN: Rockefeller University is extremely strong and well-placed to deal with dwindling funds, better than nearly any other institution in the US. That doesn’t mean I am not worried about the funding situation; I am worried about it, and we have to do things to correct it. There are two reasons why we are well placed. First, we have a fantastic faculty who are of the highest quality, and they will continue to be able to compete very effectively for support from the federal governmental agencies. Secondly, we are more financially independent than most. We have a strong endowment, and we have an excellent development department and highly supportive trustees and donors, so we can cushion reductions from our own resources. Our resources are not infinite and we’ve had troubles in recent years to balance our budget, but even so, we are wealthier than most other institutions. For those reasons we will weather this storm.
I look upon the present situation as an opportunity for RU as well as a threat. We have a very extensive recruitment search under way at the moment, and most universities across the country will be worried about taking people on in these funding circumstances. I think we can take people on, and we should be able to get the best because we will be able to give them a good deal and I don’t think many institutions will be able to do this.
NS: Another point that you bring up in your paper is that the seesaw-like increase and then stagnation of scientific funding has an impact on young scientists.
PN: I really believe that, and I’m angry about it. If we enlarge the research community, we generate more young people as principal investigators who need to create their own groups. If the funding is then turned off, we risk damaging a whole generation of younger scientists. That is a serious issue. We have to have a much longer-term and better-structured view of how we fund science. I have made some suggestions about how we might do that, because it’s not good enough to have a ‘stop-go’ policy. Maybe it makes sense to think about having smaller groups of scientists who work in collaboration with others, leading to an increase in the number of principal investigators, and a better career structure that is more flexible. I’m not sure that these are the answers, but I am sure that we should be thinking about various alternatives, and I don’t think we are doing that sufficiently at the moment. What we need is a wider national or even worldwide debate on some of these issues.
NS: Do you think science would be more effective if principal investigators could be more active research members of the lab?
PN: I do believe that. We pull out our scientists too quickly, at too young an age from being active researchers and turn them into grant-writing machines. Again, at Rockefeller, the workload for our faculty is relatively low in that they don’t need to teach very much, and they have good resources and support. Even so, I have to put lots of pressure on them to raise money, and I’d prefer not to have to do that. If a lab consists of twenty or more people the lab head is going to spend a lot of time raising money for those people. I think we should also recognize that you can be successful with smaller groups. Sometimes people think that a bigger group is the mark of success. It isn’t—what matters is the quality of work that you produce. Rod MacKinnon, one of our greatest scientists, is a good example.
NS: Could you speak a little bit about the UK grant funding system?
PN: My own experience is a little unusual because I spent half my research life in an intramural system where I had internal research funds, like working at NIH in Bethesda, and half my life in universities, writing grants. In the intramural system my lab was reviewed every five years by an external committee. Looking back on what has been achieved is a more reliable marker for what you might achieve in the future, rather than some story you invent about what you’re going to do in the next five years—when you will probably end up doing nothing like what you anticipate. The granting system for most people in the UK operates in response mode, but it is significantly less bureaucratic than the US system: grant applications are shorter, you don’t have to include the same level of detail, you don’t have to go through constant rewrites. The workload associated with the process is less, both for the person applying for the grant and for the person reviewing it. We don’t often consider why are we asking for 25 pages of single-spaced material for a project grant of $200–250K per annum. In my view, a proposal like this can be described in five pages. I’m sure we can reduce the workload to 50% of the current level in the US and be just as effective. I feel that very strongly.
NS: Some critics could say that by funding individuals similarly to how Howard Hughes Medical Institute does—based on what they’ve done recently—would be entrenching the ‘old guard,’ a development which would be bad for scientific progress.
PN: It depends on whether the ‘old guard’ is still active and producing well. If you are an active researcher, then you deserve to be supported; if not, you die by the sword. People who are young and coming into the system or who have been unproductive have to be assessed in a different way, with more focus on the future. When people write projects up for grant applications they often do not follow through on those projects, so all that is being assessed is grant-writing ability. Moreover, a committee will assess your grant application, and committees don’t like things that are odd or strange. So, even good odd ideas will not be supported if you don’t have strong supporters on the committee.
NS: You talked about the societal pressures on science, and you particularly mentioned both stem cells and creationism. Could you first talk about the threat or pressure that you think creationism puts on science and why should we care?
PN: We should care about creationism because the idea that ‘creationism is science’ undermines what science is. I do not mind if creationism is discussed in a religious context. In other words, if intelligent design is compared with the creation of the world in seven days, as in Genesis—that’s fine for discussion from a religious perspective, but it is not science. To pretend that creationism and intelligent design are science is very wrong; it undermines what science is, and it undermines our entire scientific activity.
NS: And with stem cells?
PN: The point about the stem cells issue is it gives rise to a complicated ethical debate, and there are strong feelings about these matters. It is a debate that has been hijacked by individuals with particular views who are enforcing their will on others. For example, we can use NIH funds to work on stem cells that were created before 2001. What sort of ethical argument is that? If it was ethical before 2001, why not afterwards?—it just makes no sense. As a biologist, I do not think that the fertilized egg is yet a human being. I’m not saying it is easy to define when an egg becomes a human being, but what we do know is that abortion is legal in this country and that the limit for abortion is much later—and here we have all this debate about a group of cells only a few days post-fertilization—I don’t think it makes sense. Also, I don’t think the debate about this has been very good because it has been dominated and hijacked by people who have extreme views. It is not the way to have sensible discussions about complex scientific and societal issues. The debate has to be much broader-based, much less hysterical, and it really has to consider the issues in a calmer manner, and this is not what we have seen with the development of the present legislation.
NS: If stem cell science is progressing elsewhere, do you believe we are sabotaging ourselves by pausing science while having these debates in the end, because their therapeutic rise here in the US is inevitable?
PN: In the end, if there is value for stem cell research in developing new therapies—and of course we don’t know that yet, because at the moment there is only promising potential—then this will ultimately happen in the US. However, the US, which is still the engine room of biomedical research for the world, will have lost an opportunity, both therapeutically and commercially. Also, this attitude will slow things down for the world because the US is so good at science: if the US commits resources, this will drive development forward more rapidly. So at present the world is losing an opportunity, as well as the US.
NS: How should young and aspiring scientists get involved? Should we ruminate on these topics or is there room for action?
PN: There is room for action. My main objective is to encourage young scientists to think about these issues. We should always be thinking about where science and society meet, and graduate students and postdocs should be thinking about these things too. I would like to see, in the RU context, a community more energetically discussing these issues. Some of these issues are being discussed by the Pugwash Society. That is stage one—to get people engaged. I support more grassroots dialogue with the public about scientific issues and the public’s concerns about science. At RU, graduate students and postdocs should think more about these issues with more discussions, meetings, and seminars. These are things that as scientists we all have a responsibility to think about.
Related links:
Paul Nurse (2006). US Biomedical Research under Siege. Cell 124:9–12.
Related Articles:
|
