The NIH has launched a new FOA called the Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant (Open Mike blog post). PAR-21-038 is the one for pre-clinical, PAR-21-039 is the one for clinical work. These are for Early Stage Investigators only and have special receipt dates (e.g. January 26, 2021; May 26, 2021; September […]
Why do we participate in manuscript review?
Why indeed. I have several motivations, deployed variably and therefore, my answers to his question about a journal-less world vary. First and foremost I review manuscripts as a reciprocal professional obligation, motivated by the desire I have to get my papers published. It is distasteful free-rider behavior to not review at least as often as […]
Updating the Erosion of the Purchase Power of the Modular NIH R01
I last updated this topic in mid 2018 using finalized BRDPI inflation adjustment numbers from 2016 and projections out to 2018. The latest numbers get us finalized values to 2019 and projections beyond that. There have been some minor changes from the last set of projections so it’s worth doing another update. As you can […]
Raging at the descriptive as if it is prescriptive
A quick google search turns up this definition of prescriptive: “relating to the imposition or enforcement of a rule or method.” Another one brings up this definition, and refinement, for descriptive: “describing or classifying in an objective and nonjudgmental way….. describing accents, forms, structures, and usage without making value judgments.“ We have tread this duality […]
Acknowledging undergraduate labor in academic papers
It is time. Well past time, in fact. Time for the Acknowledgments sections of academic papers to report to report on a source of funding that is all to often forgotten. In fact I cannot once remember seeing a paper or manuscript I have received to review mention it. It’s not weird. Most academic journals […]
What would credential-less academic science look like?
There was a thread on the Twitters today complaining about graduate students being called trainees. The conversation went in all of the usual directions. Because, of course, the “hot take” is correct. We have increased the number of post-graduate trainees in doctoral granting programs so as to obtain cut-rate labor to service our biomedical science […]
It isn’t the trolley problem, it’s the air supply trope of space station sci-fi
The first (I think) season of The Expanse space drama teevee show had a small sideline of something that I think I recall enough from similar fiction to be a trope. The show has the class element built into it, especially in that first season. There are rich people on the space station and poor […]
US Doctorates Awarded
One thing that I usual forget and Michael Hendricks has to remind me of is that you cannot explain the Boomer hegemony on the basis of the population size of the US Baby Boom relative to the GenX. I was struck by this type of graph back a few years ago when the total number […]
It is NOT “eating our seed corn”
The concept that we are “eating our seed corn” if we don’t do X, Y or Z to support junior scientists is completely misinformed, inapplicable and wrong. This was super popular back when the ESI issues were being debated and the NIH was trying to justify giving special consideration to fund the applications of new […]
Writing in the Time of Corona
Despite evidence to the contrary on this blog, some people who don’t like to write have occasionally said things in the vein of “oh, but you are such a good writer”. Sometimes this is by way of trying to get me to do some writing for them in the non-professional setting. Sometimes this is a […]