Please help me to understand this process better. Does the University supply free MRI and PET scans for your human research or do you pay for those through your grants? If they are not free doesn’t the cost of those studies include the overhead for those machines? When I did human clinical research in the hospital setting I paid for any and all research related care (lab testing, specimen collection, pharmacy costs, etc.) directly from the clinical trial funds. Those costs included any overhead. There was no separate institutional overhead.
If the institution is actually providing free research PET scans and MRIs then maybe these rates make sense. Somehow I doubt that is the case. Maybe I am too cynical.
Great article! As a former academic of a decade, while I understand the value of indirects when used as originally intended, I have been concerned for many years about how high indirects lead to a self-sustaining grant-application ecosystem.
I also believe NIH's singularly high rate of indirects has led to profound negative impacts on the quality of research. I wrote about it recently here in my field (tobacco harm reduction): https://arielleselyaphd.substack.com/p/the-state-of-academic-research-on-1ce , and I think this is true in many other fields as well.
TLDR: high indirects make NIH grants by far the most sought-after by universities, who encourage and then require their faculty to obtain them. This makes academic researchers beholden to a single funding agency's viewpoints, to the detriment of the quality of the science and to public health in my field (essentially scaring people away from the most effective and most widely-used method to stop smoking, noncombustible nicotine products).
If you read this site, you are likely aware of the regulatory and hidden costs associated with research. Indirect funding is essential—there's no getting around it. However, if you want to generate support for this cause, you need to provide a range of figures. Based on what you've written, I'm not sure if you oppose all cuts or just some--and in your own case which you know best, by how much?
So Dave most people’s interest is to rid the waste. Redundant studies, mindless research topics with no intrinsic value, and wastefulness that has no deemed value to enhance life or promote healthier lifestyles is the tree they want to chop. Cutting that funding is the goal and doesn’t seem to be a bad thing.
So, now I’ll be the negative Nelly. We all know that alcohol is bad for us cognitively, developmentally, socially, and the list grows. So, is there a redeeming value to continue spending millions on whether alcohol has brain related negativity? Seems pointless. Maybe a study on how to say no to alcohol would be more helpful to the people that struggle.
Please help me to understand this process better. Does the University supply free MRI and PET scans for your human research or do you pay for those through your grants? If they are not free doesn’t the cost of those studies include the overhead for those machines? When I did human clinical research in the hospital setting I paid for any and all research related care (lab testing, specimen collection, pharmacy costs, etc.) directly from the clinical trial funds. Those costs included any overhead. There was no separate institutional overhead.
If the institution is actually providing free research PET scans and MRIs then maybe these rates make sense. Somehow I doubt that is the case. Maybe I am too cynical.
Great article! As a former academic of a decade, while I understand the value of indirects when used as originally intended, I have been concerned for many years about how high indirects lead to a self-sustaining grant-application ecosystem.
I also believe NIH's singularly high rate of indirects has led to profound negative impacts on the quality of research. I wrote about it recently here in my field (tobacco harm reduction): https://arielleselyaphd.substack.com/p/the-state-of-academic-research-on-1ce , and I think this is true in many other fields as well.
TLDR: high indirects make NIH grants by far the most sought-after by universities, who encourage and then require their faculty to obtain them. This makes academic researchers beholden to a single funding agency's viewpoints, to the detriment of the quality of the science and to public health in my field (essentially scaring people away from the most effective and most widely-used method to stop smoking, noncombustible nicotine products).
If you read this site, you are likely aware of the regulatory and hidden costs associated with research. Indirect funding is essential—there's no getting around it. However, if you want to generate support for this cause, you need to provide a range of figures. Based on what you've written, I'm not sure if you oppose all cuts or just some--and in your own case which you know best, by how much?
So Dave most people’s interest is to rid the waste. Redundant studies, mindless research topics with no intrinsic value, and wastefulness that has no deemed value to enhance life or promote healthier lifestyles is the tree they want to chop. Cutting that funding is the goal and doesn’t seem to be a bad thing.
So, now I’ll be the negative Nelly. We all know that alcohol is bad for us cognitively, developmentally, socially, and the list grows. So, is there a redeeming value to continue spending millions on whether alcohol has brain related negativity? Seems pointless. Maybe a study on how to say no to alcohol would be more helpful to the people that struggle.