Svasti Haricharan

Hahaha. Never, I mean, NEVER, go into the lab

Within a (relatively) shoestring budget, American science has proven visionary and transformative. But oh, what we would achieve if the same $$$ investment was made in our ideas to fight death and disease as is made in building the infrastructure to fight other humans. /fin

Were we to be given sufficient money to fund all, or even most, of the brilliant ideas we see flowing past us as we peer review, we would unhesitatingly do so. And indeed review scores, IME, reflect positive evaluation of high risk ideas, that in a non-scarcity model would lead to funding /6

I don't know a single reviewer who wishes to stifle high risk research. But we hold ourselves to high standards of integrity, reproducibility, and rigor, because were we to relax those standards, in the most literal sense, people could die. And we do not treat that possibility cavalierly /5

It is one thing to dismantle an institution that is doing good, no, outstanding, work in the service of your own misconceptions. But to have the hubris to attempt to discredit it while doing so is an entirely different level of pathetic /4

But most importantly, the passion that runs through these applications, to attack impossible challenges, to answer increasing complex questions, to shed light on the darkest corners of the human experience with ill health and death /3

As Francis Collins said the greatest barrier to curing cancer is not lack of ideas, but lack of money (I paraphrase). And I would add, political will. I wish I could force some of our Congresspeople to read these applications, the breadth of ideas and the depth of knowledge they are based on /2

As I review grant applications today, I find myself newly incensed by political attempts to blame scientists for being conservative peer reviewers. For not funding high risk research. For being poor communicators. For being closed to new ideas. Shameful lies 🧪 /1

While I have often been a critic of NIH peer review practices, I will be the first to say that there have been huge strides in making peer review panels diverse and inclusive in recent years, to good effect. I guess when you believe in rigging systems, you see system riggers everywhere.

"Defence experts have suggested the retrofit could run into hundreds of millions - or possibly a billion - dollars." A billion dollars to retrofit a plane for one person to fly on, while cures for cancer research are thrown by the wayside. Priorities.

Good news, when being passive aggressive on social media, you can use gift links or easily accessible articles to make your point.

I was thinking about this too as I'm a standing member at NIH and review did the DoD. The amount of time and effort for no monetary benefit that is expected of us is unreasonable even at a 10th percentile funding rate. But at 4%.... what are we even asking of scientists?

Can't read it, it's behind a paywall

Science is not political

So important, every American should want unbiased AMC objective evaluations when it comes to their health. This affects you. 🧪

When you strip away humanity

🎯

We all want our institutions and leaders to fight back, but fighting back against an unprincipled and petty administration means you may go down. There is honor in going down fighting but if Cong. does not step up and stop the use of govt resources to target civilians, there will be nothing left.

Fox News poll shows that its own viewers think SCOTUS is too conservative and too partisan. Hmm.

Consequences will not be felt today, but 5 year, 10 years down the road, when you're diagnosed with cancer, and you need a new clinical trial to hop onto, or a new drug to let you watch your grandkids grow up, they won't exist. Why would anyone choose to side with cancer against humanity? 🧪

How scared must you be of "left-leaning" ideas taught by these elitist professors to go to such lengths? Either those ideas are very powerful, or those professors are far more charismatic than any prof I've met or known. They don't think much of their children, do they?

If the NIH has implemented its new multi-year policy but first asked for an increased budget to facilitate the transfer, I'd believe that this administration is working for the greater good. This is just short sighted, sloppy administration that is going to kill careers and cancer patients /fin

At the same time, investigators who have just started their labs and are looking for a big grant to launch their careers, recruit PhD students, train postdocs will fail to achieve the momentum they need. These are often our most ambitious and risk taking scientists /3

What this essentially means for cancer researchers in the US is that established investigators who have already been heavily invested in by universities and the govt, who have got a lab running and are hitting their stride in tackling really complex issues will disappear /2

But beyond that, the ESI paylines is 10%, which essentially means you have to earn a MERIT award. ESIs who manage to get a <10% score are awarded special awards because of how insanely difficult it is to hit that benchmark as a PI starting out on your career /2

Getting a 4th% grant score essentially means you get three perfect scores from three independent reviewers. Perfect scores. From there persons trained to be critical of any idea presented to them. The stars have to align just right for this to happen /1

A more accurate headline would be ".. but publish them as Supp Fig 12M"

"what would be the impact on productivity where researchers were provided with a basic level of funding, enough for a single postdoc or research technician, guaranteed for 10 years, in recognition of their hard work?" A reward based system would trump a predicted achievement system IMO

Scientific Research is Getting Cut—and That Should Scare All Americans | NEA The Trump administration’s cuts to federally funded STEM research is devastating current and future innovations by NEA Higher Ed members.

"The fallout will have catastrophic impacts on research departments.. These cascading impacts will devastate universities that rely on public funding rather than private wealth, and radically change higher education in the long term." www.nea.org/nea-today/al...

"Because of uncertainty around indirect rates and other federal funding, many university programs paused or cut biomedical graduate admissions this spring, impacting an entire cohort of future doctors and medical researchers."