Opinion: Celebrating R and D expenditures badly misses the point
- Daniel Shapiroa,1 and
- Kent Vranab
- aDepartment of Humanities, Pennsylvania State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA 17033;
- bDepartment of Pharmacology, Pennsylvania State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA 17033
As we in academic health centers are acutely aware, government funding for the biomedical sciences has gotten scarcer in the United States in recent years. The NIH budget peaked in 2010 at $31.2 billion; in 2014, it was $30.15 billion (1). This is concerning.
Although we should continue to lobby for greater investment in the research enterprise, we must also examine how we publically justify that spending. In this time of dwindling purchasing power and increased competition, there is a serious problem looming. Too many of our institutions continue to gauge overall success (and publically celebrate that success) based on the number of dollars we spend rather than the quality or quantity of the research we conduct.
Consider how private and public research universities tout their research outlays on their websites: The University of California, San Diego notes that it recently “ranked 5th in the nation for annual federal research and development spending” (www.ucsd.edu/learn/research/). The University of California, Los Angeles says that in 2011 it “exceeded $1 billion in competitively awarded research grants and contracts for a single year” (www.ucla.edu/about/facts-and-figures). And the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia heralds that it “is one of the nation’s premier research universities with more than $700 million in annual R&D expenditures” (www.upenn.edu/researchdir/). Unfortunately, our own institution’s web pages are no better; Pennsylvania State University boasts that it ranks “11th among all universities” in R&D expenditures (www.pennstatehershey.org/web/medicine/research).
When universities publically brag that we are “Xth in federal research spending,” it is akin to an airline proclaiming, “we use more gasoline than any other airline!” or “we spend more per year transporting our passengers!” Consider the appearance and potential consequences if other segments of the national budget advertised in the same way: “The …
↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: dshapiro{at}hmc.psu.edu.
