When There's Not Enough Money To Go Around, NIH Institute's Plan Will Favor Researchers Dependent On Single Grants

WASHINGTON -- Last month 10 scientists got to keep their labs open, thanks to a new policy at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The policy lets NIGMS edge further away from scientific merit in funding decisions and ration support so smaller laboratories can survive the increased competition for NIH funds. The beneficiaries are those scientists - like the 10 who didn't make the initial cutoff - who have no other sources of support or who are first-time applicants. The potential losers are those with more than $500,000 in grants and those whose grant renewals call for big increases. The new policy comes in response to increased concern that investigators at small laboratories are being squeezed out of research. Although the NIH budget has grown steadily, it has not kept pace with the increased cost and size of the research enterprise. A decade ago, one in three meritorious grants received funding; now only about one in five does so. There has been increased emphasis on large projects, such as sequencing the human genome, and support for centers that do interdisciplinary research or train biomedical scientists. But allocations for research by individual investigators have received only modest increases, while soaring salaries and equipment costs have further taxed those budgets. While most scientists hail the NIGMS measures as a justifiable attempt to keep more researchers afloat in the current fiscal storm, investigators are still outraged. "It's an austerity measure that we've been forced into," says B.R. Brinkley, chairman of the public policy committee of the American Society of Cell Biology. "That's exactly the position we do not want to be getting into." Brinkley fears that this new policy is one more step in the dismantling of basic biomedical research in the United States. Already, too few grants are being funded, and there are mandatory 12 percent cuts in the budgets of grants that are funded. Nor is he the only one worried. Desperate scientists are hiring lobbyists and threatening to march on Washington or boycott serving on peer review panels in protest. Some are abandoning their labs all together. Critics also say this move by NIGMS shifts too much responsibility onto the NIH staff and undermines peer review. At NIH, study sections composed of peers judge scientific merit of grant proposals using a system that ranges from a top score of 100 to a "low" of 500. Then each proposal receives a percentile ranking to balance out the toughest study sections with those that grade more leniently. In theory, that list is used to determine what will be funded. NIH works down the ranking until money runs out; that point is known as the cutoff score. The system does have some flexibility, however. NIH administrators have always had the final say on who gets support, and how much is received. At times administrators reach below that cutoff to give grants to young investigators or to scientists who warrant special consideration. In recent years in making cuts, they have protected some grants while slashing others. Now NIGMS says it needs to take that prerogative more seriously. In the January round of NIGMS grants, for example, 937 were approved for funding by the study sections, but only about 165 fell above the cutoff percentile. A previous study found that about 40 percent of those who fall a few points short of the cutoff for awards have no other significant support. Yet the difference between them and their more successful colleagues is minimal. "For what is an inconsequential difference in raw priority scores, funding decisions are being made," says David Luck, a professor of cell biology at Rockefeller University and member of the NIGMS advisory council who spearheaded the policy changes. "It's beyond the level of discrimination of the study section." Adds NIGMS council member Baldomero Olivera, professor of biology at the University of Utah, "there clearly was a very strong feeling that investigators with a single grant ought to be protected more." Larger labs can pull in data and resources from other grants to present a stronger case for funding than can scientists with smaller operations. They are also more likely to have the edge in priority scores. "It's easy for the big labs to get bigger; the small labs are really at a significant disadvantage," he adds. To some scientists, the funding situation is a nightmare that only seems to be getting worse. Each year, they have been forced to lower their expectations a little further, and these latest changes at NIGMS seem to be setting yet another bad precedent. Although the 10 percent cap on budget increases and the close scrutiny of well-endowed scientists are just guidelines for dealing with stretching limited dollars, the research community worries that they will become permanent funding criteria. Investigators have good reason to be concerned. Several years ago, NIH decided to deal with a "crisis" shortfall by cutting grants. These "downward negotiations" have now become part of the budget process and have been increasing steadily. The continued budget squeeze is generating radical "solutions" that give everyone cause for concern. For example, in the March 1990 American Society for Microbiology News (56:129), Tufts biologist Abraham Sonenshein suggested that NIH limit grants to five in number and support to $500,000, a move other scientists feel will destroy science. "The thing that drives basic science is the entrepreneurial spirit," says B.R. Brinkley, chairman of cell biology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. "There shouldn't be any cap in any way." Other scientists argue that if these changes are necessary, then NIH should implement them at all the institutes, so that all scientists are affected equally. "You can't have different parts [of NIH] functioning differently," says cell biologist Norton Gilula, dean of graduate studies at the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif. "I can't understand how they [NIGMS] went forward and treated their problem as an individual issue. I think it was a bold and unfortunate move." Scientists may view these as austerity measures taken by one institute, but NIH administrators argue that NIGMS isn't doing anything really new. "It's not a unilateral kind of thing," says Katherine Bick, who until last month was NIH deputy director for extramural research. "All the institutes are doing this. What might be different is that they [officials at NIGMS] are codifying and talking about it a little more explicitly." Nor do NIH leaders think the changes at NIGMS should be instituted across the board. "We have 13 institutes, and each one goes about things a little differently," says William Raub, acting director at NIH. "They are attuned to the needs and wishes of their own community, and they try to do what's best for their constituents. Once we set up the overall structure, it's up to each director to chart his or her own course." However, the institutes plan to discuss the issue further. Raub acknowledges, however, that those scientists with substantial support from NIH are most likely to feel the pinch from NIGMS's new policy. "After all," he says, "if you're trying to find more money to spread around, you go where the money is. And that means the largest grantees." But Gilula warns that the lack of a uniform policy will "create tremendous chaos." Some investigators predict that scientists will simply change their grant renewal applications into "new" grants not subject to the 10 percent limitation, or worse, will change the grant focus slightly and submit them to different institutes without such policies. There may also be a tendency for scientists to submit grants for "minimal fundable units," smaller projects that can seem novel but which might be more efficiently incorporated into a larger grant application. Bick doesn't think these tactics will be very effective, since the institutes have similar criteria and since the scientist does not decide where the grant goes. But some scientists say that these practices already occur and will only increase as scientists scheme to get around any limitations. --E.P. "They are getting clobbered." But money for investigators dependent on one grant must come from somewhere. "The donor class would be people who had more than one source of support," says Luck. "They would be sacrificed." Those to be sacrificed include scientists asking for large increases in their grant renewals. Under the NIGMS policy they will be limited to 10 percent increases over the previous year. The cap on increases in grant size applies to supplies, salary, personnel, and other expenses outside of large equipment. Renewals have tended to call for a 30 percent jump in funding, says Marvin Cassman, deputy director at NIGMS. Of course, those renewals are then subjected to administrative belt-tightening, called downward negotiations, which trim about 12 percent off the approved levels. Now grants are subject either to the 10 percent increase or the 12 percent cut, not both, depending on which provided the least amount of support, says Cassman. So in January, even though the study section suggested that about one half the renewals be given more than a 10 percent increase over last year's budget, the NIGMS staff cut almost a third of those requests to 10 percent. Those decisions freed up enough money to support those 10 scientists who had slightly lower rankings but no other significant sources of support. "A discontinuation of funding for a research program is a disaster," says Luck. NIGMS does not consider small grants - about $25,000 - to be enough to keep a lab going. Also, the budgets for scientists up for their first renewals are exempted. Those first grants tend to be much smaller and thus tend to jump significantly the next time around. "The first renewal is one in which success is rewarded," says Cassman. For example in 1989, the 425 new grants averaged $126,000, while the renewals tended to run about $203,000. Also, NIGMS is scrutinizing scientists who have more than $500,000 in annual support. The council is concerned that the institute may be channeling shrinking resources into fewer projects and therefore neglecting new ideas that could lead to big breakthroughs down the road. "We want to preserve the diversity of scientific endeavors in very hard times," says Luck. The advisory council tries to evaluate each of these scientists, but, Luck warns, there are still many unresolved issues. The council has not decided whether to include the principal investigator's salary in that $500,000, for example. Some universities require that scientists pay their salaries through grants; those researchers are less able to handle a sharp reduction in their request. NIGMS requires that scientists list "institutional support," but scientists argue that the guidelines for that category are open to interpretation by both the investigator and the program officer. "I think it's an extremely vague, discriminatory process," says Norton Gilula, a cell biologist and the dean of graduate studies at the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif. In January, about 10 high-ranking grants came from scientists with more than $500,000 in support. Two of those were passed over. Some scientists fear these policy changes are part of a trend to "equalize" science. To stretch the research dollar a little further, the federal government is cutting out incentives for enterprising researchers, they argue. Last year, for example, Congress set a $125,000 cap on salary support from grants. Now scientists with $500,000 may have a harder time getting funded. Not everyone sees the two moves as being part of a trend, however. "The cap on salary is absolute," says Carolyn Slayman, chair of human genetics at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. "The other [$500,000 limit] is not a cap all; it's simply a trigger for administrative review." For example, in this first go-around, most of the grants to those big labs still got funded. "The issue there is again a question of equity and relative importance," says NIGMS's Cassman. These policy changes really just affect "decisions at the margins of the payline. We consider the quality to be very close to being equivalent." Although study sections are not supposed to consider a scientist's other sources of support, they may be tougher on well-funded investigators, and, in fact, there have been a few isolated cases in which that seems to have occurred. At the same time, the council and NIGMS are worried about redundancy. They want to fund projects that are truly novel and not just small variants of research already in progress. "These are issues that we've never had to deal with before," says Cassman. "If we can assure the study section that we are looking at this, then maybe they will go back to tending their business." Tension also exists over whether NIH staff or outside scientists should be performing this funding triage. Scientists argue for uniform rules, but, says Katherine Bick, who until last month was the deputy director for extramural research at NIH, "You can't make absolute judgments. That's what science administrators are there for." Scientists disagree. "We can live with it, if we think it comes from quality peer-review people, as opposed to staff people," says Brinkley. He and others fear that peer review is being undermined. There have been grants rated within the top five that have been halved by NIH staff. "It's a catch-22 situation," complains another scientist, who refused to be identified because his renewal was one of those cut sharply. He is upset because scientists received so little notice of these changes and because they affect only the subset of investigators who are up for renewals this year. "If they really want to start taxing everyone, they should do it across the board, including continuations." Scientists and NIH do agree that the best solution would be more money. "If we could get back to 40 percent [funding rate], then we wouldn't have to worry about any of this," says Cassman. He estimates it would take a $45 million increase at his institute to get research grants up to a 35 percent award rate and $73 million to achieve that rate without downward negotiation. The American Society for Cell Biology and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology have pooled resources to hire a lobbyist who will work to get money earmarked for single-investigator grants. In March, the past presidents of the biochemistry society decided to urge Congress to add $200 million to NIH's budget for individual research grants. As it stands, the 1990 award rate may reach 23 percent, and in 1991 it is expected to approach 26 percent. Few expect that the situation will be remedied soon, and so NIGMS plans to continue crisis management. "It's a question of relative jeopardy," says Cassman. "These are all bad choices."

When There's Not Enough Money To Go Around, NIH Institute's Plan Will Favor Researchers Dependent On Single Grants

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of