Our Most Influential Papers Do Not Recieve NIH Funding
Where does $41.7* billion dollars a year go?
The NIH invests about $41.7* billion annually in medical research for the American people. (That is funded by the taxpayer.) Academics fight over grants and research funding.
Yet, only 40% of scientists with highly cited papers are principal investigators on NIH Grants. That means 60% of them do not.
The papers with the most insights and research, most influential papers in medicine the last DECADE in their field DO NOT RECEIVE FEDERAL FUNDING.
High impact innovators are funded mostly by completely mutually exclusive groups.
“ A truly innovative idea cannot be judged by peers: if it is truly innovative, no peer has any clue about it; if peers already know about it, it is not innovative….”
- Ioannidis and Nicholson look at the peer review process where groups review and rank search applications from their peers (2012)
We believe that NIH should fund some exceptional scientists based on the objectively measurable citation impact of their previous work. Peer review is the way it is applied now encourages conformity and mediocrity and favors people who know how to network and play the petty games of academia, not those who have brilliant ideas.”
Did you know that the average age for a researcher to receive independent funding from the NIH is 44 years old 47 for MD’s.
If you comply with this orthodoxy you have to wait till you're 47 to be an independent researcher.
How about how the NIH funds research proposals.