RSS Feed MenuThe National Institutes of Health pushed back at a NewMajority exclusive report, that revealed legitimate research programs were denied funding in favor of politically correct, scientifically dubious projects.
A spokesman for the NIH stood behind each of the four grants mentioned in the story, and a subject of protest by GOP Congressmen: “Substance Use and HIV Rise among Thai Women,” “Patterns of Abuse in the Brazilian Rave Culture,” “The Healing of the Canoe,” and “The Impact of Dragon Boat Racing on CancerSurvivorship.” The NIH would not reveal how much funding had been given to these programs.
NIH spokesman Don Ralbovsky said criticisms of those grants unfairly took those studies out of context. “This constant battle against illness and disease cannot be limited to biological factors but has to include behavioral and social factors as well,” he told NewMajority. “Some research on sex-related and substance abuse behavior is easy to ridicule if it is taken out of its public health context. The fact is, we need to explore a range of research avenues in vulnerable populations around the world to learn the best ways to prevent the spread of disease.”
The Institutes claimed that the grants to study substance abuse amongst Thai women and in the Brazilian rave culture were both necessary in order to “translate and adapt interventions that have proven to be effective in the U.S. to other communities and international settings.” Further, the NIH supported its decision to fund the project on “The Healing of the Canoe” by stressing the need to plan and evaluate a “community-based and culturally congruent intervention to reduce health disparities and promote health in theSuquamish Tribe.” Research on “The Impact of Dragon Boat Racing on Cancer Survivorship” was defended by a claim that there is still much to learn about optimizing quality of life among survivors.
Asked how the four grants align with the NIH’s goals, Ralbovsky could not link them to the Institutes’ specific research priorities. Instead, he said that the grants “fit into our overall mission,” but refused to comment further. When pressed on specific questions about the cost of the grants and how the grants align with the Institutes’ specific research priorities, the NIH declined to answer. The NIH merely confirmed that none of the studies were funded by the stimulus package.
The NIH’s response was prompted by this FF report that revealed that Representatives Joe Barton (R-TX) and Greg Walden (R-OR), ranking members for the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations, respectively, were preparing to send a letter of inquiry to NIH Director Dr. Frances Collins. The letter inquired as to how the four grants relate to the NIH’s funding priorities – a question that remains unanswered even after the NIH was pressed by NewMajority.
The NIH also refused to provide information about the denied grants. “The agency never releases information on grants that are not approved,” stated Ralbovsky, “that’s standard procedure.” As a result, the true cost of these grants may never be evaluated, since information on alternative programs is not available.
Nevertheless, it would be reasonable to suggest, as Reps. Barton and Walden do in their letter, that valuable projects were passed over in favor of the grants itemized above. This is especially so when considering the increase in NIH grant requests over the last five years – in 2004, 24.6% of 40,861 grant applications were approved; in 2008, only 21.8% of 43,467 were.
Geoff C // Sep 24, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Tim,
While I appreciate that research papers often have absurd names that don’t appear to have any relevance to the real world, that is often not the case. Have you read the reports that you are attacking? I haven’t. Are there connections between rave culture in Brazil and party culture in the US? Maybe.
Is it possible that to analyze the differences between college aged students in a country with a low (or non-existent) drinking age and a high drinking age like the US, Brazil might be a good location to do that.
I’m not saying I know the answers to this but there are many difficulties doing research that are difficult to understand unless you are in the field. There are, for example, many challenges that researchers must overcome to do a project. One of the biggest ones is legal issues around the project. It may have been impossible to examine the effects of drugs and alcohol on young people in the US because of research restrictions (the research might require youths to take drugs and therefore it is illegal). This might have made Brazil a more desirable topic.
What I do know is that ‘Effects of cAMP simulate a late stage of LTP in hippocampal CA1 neurons.’ is written by a Nobel Laureate in Physiology & Medicine. I have no idea what that means, but obviously it is scientifically significant. Likewise healing canoes and dragonboat paddling cancer patients may have a much deeper significance beyond their title. Maybe dragon boating is an activity that unhealthy individuals who are immunocompromised can get involved in. Maybe healing canoes is focusing on aboriginal health care.
I don’t know what these papers are really talking about and I don’t know if they are genuinely scientifically significant.
What I do know is that you shouldn’t judge a book by is cover or a paper by its title.
rbottoms // Sep 24, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Screw it. Attack it anyway.
Getting back a majority in the House & Senate is more important. You can always restore the money later once you’re back in power.
Derek // Sep 24, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Tim should stick to figuring out how pure certain conservatives are.
ghiles // Sep 25, 2009 at 5:08 am
All four of these papers sound like epidemiology research proposals about different topics… (drug use, teamwork/exercise, belonging to a certain in-group (Native Americans) Even though the NIH did not give exact numbers, my guess is that these studies are VERY cheap to conduct compared to some other research proposals put forth to the NIH. Something like drug development for cancer treatments or what have you probably costs much, much more than studies like this. (It’s sad that the NIH didn’t release the numbers, especially in comparison to a study involving drug development) I used to work in a synthetic chemistry lab devoted to drug development with about 25 people and we would spend $30,000 a year just on nitrogen gas to keep our experiments dry and free of oxygen! Developing new drugs for common ailments is certainly popular endeavor, but is much more expensive than epidemiology studies such as those above. Preventing disease by understanding the patterns though which it spreads (and drug addiction is almost a disease!) is certainly much better than paying for expensive drug treatments through charity or government programs. More than anything, though, as one previous commenter pointed out, I’m sure you could scour the research proposals in the academy endlessly and come up with many titles that sounded ridiculous in layman terms. The panels that decide whether research is deserving of a grant, though, look at much more than just the title! I think we as a country would benefit more from looking for supposed “waste” in our entitlement and defense spending than in attacking our basic research funding that provides much of the fuel for the innovation that’s so vital to our economy.
fert // Sep 25, 2009 at 8:26 pm
In the next Nature News Brief:
NewMajority pushed back at a National Institutes of Health exclusive remark, that revealed legitimate news articles were denied publication in favor of politically correct, journalistically dubious reporting.
Tim Mak // Sep 26, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Fert – That’s hilarious! Touché.