Improving support for young biomedical scientists

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1 University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States
2 Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany
3 Rescuing Biomedical Research, Washington, DC, United States
4 Lewis-Sigler Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States
5 Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York City, New York, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26465v2
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Science and Medical Education, Science Policy
Keywords
Young faculty, Innovative science, high risk high reward research, new innovator award, ERC Starting Grant
Copyright
© 2018 Alberts et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Alberts B, Hyman T, Pickett C, Tilghman S, Varmus H. 2018. Improving support for young biomedical scientists. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26465v2

Abstract

A vibrant American biomedical research enterprise requires a constant infusion of young scientists proposing and conducting important, innovative research. Demographic analyses indicate that the biomedical research workforce has been aging, with scientists launching independent academic laboratories much later in their lives than previously. In addition, those starting new laboratories encounter strong pressures discouraging novel, potentially groundbreaking research. These two factors represent a major threat to the vitality of biomedical research in the U.S. Based on recent analyses demonstrating the success of such programs, we propose that the NIH expand by ten-fold its use of the New Innovator award—an award available only to young scientists proposing innovative research. We argue that this action, accompanied by two related policy changes, would dramatically improve the U.S. biomedical research enterprise.

Author Comment

We have updated the text, and this is now published in Science: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6390/716