As it has been the past weeks, government leaders are making big changes. I am excited to bring you thoughts from someone who understands the process of funding biomedical research.
Confirms the "How" the NIH was able to push so much narrative and have back up from the universities, activists run dogma. Need say no more. Thank you.
The media’s coverage of the proposed NIH indirect cost cap is a perfect example of what’s wrong with how we discuss healthcare policy—hysteria instead of an objective look at solutions. Take PBS NewsHour this week: rather than exploring different perspectives, they framed the issue as a looming catastrophe, featuring only physicians and administrators who warned that capping indirect costs at 15% would cripple medical institutions. Yet, I know professors who see indirect costs as excessive—money that should go toward research but funneled into administrative expenses instead. But PBS didn’t include those voices, instead presenting positions such as the one from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which claimed the cuts would “diminish the nation’s research capacity, slowing scientific progress and depriving patients, families, and communities across the country of new treatments, diagnostics, and preventative interventions.” Having worked for many years in Big Pharma, I once thought the industry was the primary culprit when misrepresenting the truth. But I’ve realized that academic and public health experts are often just as prone to taking strong positions based on self-interest—yet the public tends to elevate those in the ivory tower as impartial authorities. The news media—whether left- or right-leaning—amplifies these voices without scrutiny, leaving little room for debate. I don’t know how a show like PBS NewsHour decides who to interview. Still, even the educated public should approach the media with the same skepticism typically reserved for profit-driven pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
I agree that I would have found Flier easier to listen to if he hadn't kept repeating "fools" "idiots" etc. this was very polarizing from such an esteemed and accomplished man. He did the same thing when he dismissed Vinny out of hand. He also sounded very angry. On the positive side, if I could get by the name calling, I found his talk thought provoking in some areas.
You're so great at being even-handed in interviews, John, and letting Dr. Flier have his say. It was hard for me to get past his name calling ("fools" and "idiots"), and also the fact that he dismissed without explanation the possibility of dipping into the endowment at Harvard. At the moment, if you invested Harvard's endowment of $53.2 million in 30-year treasury bonds (that is, modestly) you'd have $2.49 billion to play with at the end of the year. That would keep a lot of lights on in their labs.
This may drive universities to only pursue NIH grants that have real value - in which they can do other adjacent research using endowment or private dollars to expand.
They failed at reproducibility in research because it was not an incentivized objective of research.
And give up on make-work research that just offsets overhead.
Universities have to support facilities, utilities and among other things, security for research these days. Those are not inexpensive. In addition, reporting requirements, and the mechanics of applying for grants, assembling all the required information and documentation, and fulfilling the reporting requirements of the various granting agencies. I can recall the days when a PI could do the bulk of the work themselves. By the time I retired, there was no chance I could fulfill all the application requirements without significant university staff support, and there's no reasonable way I could have actually conducted research AND fulfilled the reporting requirements unless I had significant staff support. Non-research support staff have never been supported in my grants: The university has to pony up for them. I didn't have to pay rent: My office and lab spaces, for me, my research professionals and graduate students was always provided by the university.
I started when one granting organization had dictated the indirect rate (25%) and the University and I could take it or lose it. Over time, I watched that grow to 58.5% at one institution, and 62% at another. Note that these are negotiated rates, so the University doesn't arbitrarily dictate the rate, nor does the granting agency. These are negotiated periodically, usually not annually, and they are between the university's grants and contracts division and each agency. When I left one university, I still had grants at the 25% level because of the nature of the agreement, the requirements to submit and reporting burden.
Also note that the Universities usually audit each grant and external contract annually, another internal expense, so they might catch impropriety or error before a Federal audit. It's better to tell the Agency they detected an error and propose a settlement or fix, than to have to take what the Agency decides when they discover something late.
Simply put, as unhappy as I was effectively losing more than half my funding to administration, the University made it possible for me to continue my research THANKS to that indirect element. The support staff from Contracts and Grants have always been efficient and have always facilitated getting my submissions and reports into the Agencies in a timely manner even when their calls were irritating because I was trying to do actual research and didn't want to do paperwork.
Congress mandated the massive changes to reporting in attempts to make sure research wasn't wasting money. If you want to reduce the reporting costs and complications for grant submission, stop blaming the universities, and start looking at Congress, in this case at GOP majorities who've questioned science and research literally for decades.
Simple solution. No government funding of research. Abolish the NIH. Individuals are free to donate whatever they wish to whomever they wish. Colleges and universities may allocate funds from their endowments and tuitions however they like. No taxpayer money to any of them.
The variability in indirect costs itself indicative of some serious problems. I think. Not that there shouldn't be some variability as the cost of overhead are dramatically different in San Francisco than they are in Iowa.
t 15% ain't going to cut it imo.
My guesses is in the range of 20 to 30%. If you're doing good work and it's efficient.
Unless I misinterpreted what he was saying at the end of this podcast, it sounded like he agreed with Dr Vinay’s idea of needing to run experiments to find out how to “best” issue grants through NIH.
Prof flier is nothing less than a fraud. The truth is that indirect costs should be cut to zero. Yes zero. There is absolutely no justification for universities to use indirect costs to fund boondoggles. It’s not for the nih to fund building and maintenance costs, to fund humanities departments, to fund dei initiatives and hiring practices ( whether of new faculty or students). All of that should be funded from student fees ( they are high enough after all) and endowments (Harvard is certainly wealthy enough). If, on the other hand, universities want to keep indirect costs then they should become part of the federal government. And for prof flier and his compadres in academia, I would go one step further. If they persist with dei, student selection other than based on merit, and blatant support of anti-semitism, I would humbly suggest that they be cut off immediately from all future federal grant support. You can bet the universities would come to their senses very very quickly,
Thank you for this. Now let hear a conversation with someone who sees cutting indirect costs as positive and necessary. A former Dean of Harvard Medical School who likely benefited from indirect cost is going to be biased. Let’s hear the other side of this argument now.
The issue of indirect costs goes beyond NIH. USAID research grants also pay out indirect costs. An audit report January 2024 was unable to determine if USAID used best practices for managing indirect costs. https://oig.usaid.gov/node/6560
IDCs are essentially rent subsidies to the universities. Once the institutions realized this the IDC veil was extended to every research grant written regardless of discipline. And thus university research grant foundations were born and extensive administration staff were required to make sure the “rules” were followed. Cutting IDC rates will affect the researchers more than administration as once an admin position has been created, it’s virtually impossible to delete it due to…..administration requirements that they themselves created.
I believe that many cuts directed by this new administration reflect President Trump’s often demonstrated strategy of negotiation. Changes (deals) have to start somewhere. The mistake made by many of the reflex-responders is to light their own hair on fire and don’t realize that if they rationally prove need, they might get much closer to their goal. But grift and ridiculousness won’t automatically cut it anymore.
And no, I didn’t accuse anybody of anything here. It’s just how all this looks to a whole lot of us taxpayers.
Confirms the "How" the NIH was able to push so much narrative and have back up from the universities, activists run dogma. Need say no more. Thank you.
The media’s coverage of the proposed NIH indirect cost cap is a perfect example of what’s wrong with how we discuss healthcare policy—hysteria instead of an objective look at solutions. Take PBS NewsHour this week: rather than exploring different perspectives, they framed the issue as a looming catastrophe, featuring only physicians and administrators who warned that capping indirect costs at 15% would cripple medical institutions. Yet, I know professors who see indirect costs as excessive—money that should go toward research but funneled into administrative expenses instead. But PBS didn’t include those voices, instead presenting positions such as the one from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which claimed the cuts would “diminish the nation’s research capacity, slowing scientific progress and depriving patients, families, and communities across the country of new treatments, diagnostics, and preventative interventions.” Having worked for many years in Big Pharma, I once thought the industry was the primary culprit when misrepresenting the truth. But I’ve realized that academic and public health experts are often just as prone to taking strong positions based on self-interest—yet the public tends to elevate those in the ivory tower as impartial authorities. The news media—whether left- or right-leaning—amplifies these voices without scrutiny, leaving little room for debate. I don’t know how a show like PBS NewsHour decides who to interview. Still, even the educated public should approach the media with the same skepticism typically reserved for profit-driven pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
I agree that I would have found Flier easier to listen to if he hadn't kept repeating "fools" "idiots" etc. this was very polarizing from such an esteemed and accomplished man. He did the same thing when he dismissed Vinny out of hand. He also sounded very angry. On the positive side, if I could get by the name calling, I found his talk thought provoking in some areas.
You're so great at being even-handed in interviews, John, and letting Dr. Flier have his say. It was hard for me to get past his name calling ("fools" and "idiots"), and also the fact that he dismissed without explanation the possibility of dipping into the endowment at Harvard. At the moment, if you invested Harvard's endowment of $53.2 million in 30-year treasury bonds (that is, modestly) you'd have $2.49 billion to play with at the end of the year. That would keep a lot of lights on in their labs.
(Typo: that should have been $53.2 billion with a B for Harvard's endowment.)
Thank you for this interview. It’s very satisfying to listen to a nuanced discussion, for a change.
Great to hear another perspective on this issue. I would love to hear Vinay respond after Dr. Flier called him not a serious thinker
This may drive universities to only pursue NIH grants that have real value - in which they can do other adjacent research using endowment or private dollars to expand.
They failed at reproducibility in research because it was not an incentivized objective of research.
And give up on make-work research that just offsets overhead.
Universities have to support facilities, utilities and among other things, security for research these days. Those are not inexpensive. In addition, reporting requirements, and the mechanics of applying for grants, assembling all the required information and documentation, and fulfilling the reporting requirements of the various granting agencies. I can recall the days when a PI could do the bulk of the work themselves. By the time I retired, there was no chance I could fulfill all the application requirements without significant university staff support, and there's no reasonable way I could have actually conducted research AND fulfilled the reporting requirements unless I had significant staff support. Non-research support staff have never been supported in my grants: The university has to pony up for them. I didn't have to pay rent: My office and lab spaces, for me, my research professionals and graduate students was always provided by the university.
I started when one granting organization had dictated the indirect rate (25%) and the University and I could take it or lose it. Over time, I watched that grow to 58.5% at one institution, and 62% at another. Note that these are negotiated rates, so the University doesn't arbitrarily dictate the rate, nor does the granting agency. These are negotiated periodically, usually not annually, and they are between the university's grants and contracts division and each agency. When I left one university, I still had grants at the 25% level because of the nature of the agreement, the requirements to submit and reporting burden.
Also note that the Universities usually audit each grant and external contract annually, another internal expense, so they might catch impropriety or error before a Federal audit. It's better to tell the Agency they detected an error and propose a settlement or fix, than to have to take what the Agency decides when they discover something late.
Simply put, as unhappy as I was effectively losing more than half my funding to administration, the University made it possible for me to continue my research THANKS to that indirect element. The support staff from Contracts and Grants have always been efficient and have always facilitated getting my submissions and reports into the Agencies in a timely manner even when their calls were irritating because I was trying to do actual research and didn't want to do paperwork.
Congress mandated the massive changes to reporting in attempts to make sure research wasn't wasting money. If you want to reduce the reporting costs and complications for grant submission, stop blaming the universities, and start looking at Congress, in this case at GOP majorities who've questioned science and research literally for decades.
Simple solution. No government funding of research. Abolish the NIH. Individuals are free to donate whatever they wish to whomever they wish. Colleges and universities may allocate funds from their endowments and tuitions however they like. No taxpayer money to any of them.
The variability in indirect costs itself indicative of some serious problems. I think. Not that there shouldn't be some variability as the cost of overhead are dramatically different in San Francisco than they are in Iowa.
t 15% ain't going to cut it imo.
My guesses is in the range of 20 to 30%. If you're doing good work and it's efficient.
Unless I misinterpreted what he was saying at the end of this podcast, it sounded like he agreed with Dr Vinay’s idea of needing to run experiments to find out how to “best” issue grants through NIH.
I thought this as well and that he should have given VP credit, especially after his earlier disparagements.
Prof flier is nothing less than a fraud. The truth is that indirect costs should be cut to zero. Yes zero. There is absolutely no justification for universities to use indirect costs to fund boondoggles. It’s not for the nih to fund building and maintenance costs, to fund humanities departments, to fund dei initiatives and hiring practices ( whether of new faculty or students). All of that should be funded from student fees ( they are high enough after all) and endowments (Harvard is certainly wealthy enough). If, on the other hand, universities want to keep indirect costs then they should become part of the federal government. And for prof flier and his compadres in academia, I would go one step further. If they persist with dei, student selection other than based on merit, and blatant support of anti-semitism, I would humbly suggest that they be cut off immediately from all future federal grant support. You can bet the universities would come to their senses very very quickly,
DEI is based on merit. Unfortunately, if you hear the same misinformation repeatedly, it is perceived to be true.
What are you talking about? Sarcasm?
Thank you for this. Now let hear a conversation with someone who sees cutting indirect costs as positive and necessary. A former Dean of Harvard Medical School who likely benefited from indirect cost is going to be biased. Let’s hear the other side of this argument now.
The issue of indirect costs goes beyond NIH. USAID research grants also pay out indirect costs. An audit report January 2024 was unable to determine if USAID used best practices for managing indirect costs. https://oig.usaid.gov/node/6560
IDCs are essentially rent subsidies to the universities. Once the institutions realized this the IDC veil was extended to every research grant written regardless of discipline. And thus university research grant foundations were born and extensive administration staff were required to make sure the “rules” were followed. Cutting IDC rates will affect the researchers more than administration as once an admin position has been created, it’s virtually impossible to delete it due to…..administration requirements that they themselves created.
I believe that many cuts directed by this new administration reflect President Trump’s often demonstrated strategy of negotiation. Changes (deals) have to start somewhere. The mistake made by many of the reflex-responders is to light their own hair on fire and don’t realize that if they rationally prove need, they might get much closer to their goal. But grift and ridiculousness won’t automatically cut it anymore.
And no, I didn’t accuse anybody of anything here. It’s just how all this looks to a whole lot of us taxpayers.
He's proven time and again to be a terrible negotiator, over many decades.
It’s a great discussion. All so self-refuting. The main question is outcomes. All this, but to what end? It’s a self-licking ice cream cone!