The NIH wants your input!

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Friday April 10, 2015 · 1:50 PM PDT

2015/04/10 · 13:50

The National Institute of Health (NIH) recently posted a Request for Information (RFI) on the topic of 'Optimizing Funding Policies and Other Strategies to Improve the Impact and Sustainability of Biomedical Research.'

They are particularly interested in receiving comments on the following four topics:

1. Key issues that currently limit the impact of NIH’s funding for biomedical research and challenge the sustainability of the biomedical research enterprise. We welcome responses that explain why these issues are of high importance.
2. Ideas about adjusting current funding policies to ensure both continued impact and sustainability of the NIH-supported research enterprise. We welcome responses that point to specific strengths or weaknesses in current policies and suggest how we can build on or improve them.
3. Ideas for new policies, strategies, and other approaches that would increase the impact and sustainability of NIH-funded biomedical research.
4. Any other issues that respondents feel are relevant.

Comments can be submitted here.

This request for comments is encouraging, given that a number of independent researchers, organizations, and policy analysts have been speaking out for years about the steps that NIH should be taking in order to better serve the research community. Given the current funding environment for scientific research in this country, this call for public comments will almost certainly be followed by changes in how the NIH distributes its significantly diminished resources.

If you have ideas about changes you would like to see in how NIH funds biomedical research, let them know!

Dark Age for Science in America

deepbreath

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Wednesday August 14, 2013 · 10:44 AM PDT

2013/08/14 · 10:44

I am not sure if anyone has posted on this yet, but there is an excellent article in the Huffington Post about the effects of the sequestration on research universities and the primary investigators currently trying to scrape by in the current, horrible funding climate.

I happened to work in the same building as the professor from the University of Virginia mentioned in the article and can tell you that things are every bit as bad in every lab on every floor of his building, spanning 6 different departments.

Something needs to change, and change soon.

Senator Webb's Explanation for his FISA vote

deepbreath

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Friday February 22, 2008 · 3:22 PM PST

2008/02/22 · 15:22

What follows is the reply I received after sending numerous emails and letters, urging Senator Webb to strongly oppose the telecom immunity spelled out in the Senate bill. It was sent out this afternoon (Friday) around 3pm of course, with the rest of the trash no doubt, a week late and a dollar short:

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