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Young scientists will be the hardest hit by changes to the way research funds are distributed through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, according to a McGill University researcher and assistant professor.
Michael Hendricks, who studies how stress affects the development of the brain and behaviour in small roundworms, estimated that only four per cent of early-career researchers who apply for funding will be successful under CIHR reforms. Early-career researchers are defined as those within the first five years of their independent careers. Things are not much better for mid-career scientists, between seven and 10 per cent of whom can expect to be successful in applying for funding through two CIHR programs, he estimates.
Changes at the CIHR “cannot properly be called reforms,” said Hendricks. “It is called eating your young.”
Under the agency’s old funding formula, the grant application success rate was 18 per cent for early-career researchers and 19 per cent for mid-career scientists. Under the old system, success rates for senior scientists were about 21 per cent, compared to an estimated 25 per cent under the reformed system.
Hendricks says changes to the peer review system, which include an end to face-to-face meetings, disadvantage early-career scientists, as did an effort to create more long-term stable funding for senior investigators.
“As a result of the reforms, early-career scientists have seen a huge, immediate decline in opportunities and funding success.”
McGill researcher Michael Hendricks.
Scientists have told the Citizen that morale is low and some might have to close their labs because they have little prospect of getting grants to continue their work. Leading Canadian stem cell researcher Michael Rudnicki has called for management changes at the biomedical research funding agency. And one Ottawa researcher says he can no longer in good conscience advise his students, or even his children, to pursue careers in science.
Hendricks, why analyzed historic data and budget information from CIHR to reach his conclusions, wrote a letter to federal Health Minister Jane Philpott and science ministers Kirsty Duncan and Navdeep Singh Bains asking for more support for early-career scientists and an assessment of the impact of CIHR reforms.
Hendricks said he doesn’t believe the fallout for younger researchers was the intended consequence of the reforms. “The most prominent problem was flat budgets with declining purchasing power that threatened to squander the visionary effort, made prior to the Harper era, to make Canada a biomedical research leader through investigator-initiated research,” he said.
The reforms, he said, have made the situation worse.
“A wait-and-see approach to the reforms will take years and will risk squandering the scientific potential of a large cohort of young scientists recruited to Canadian research institutions.”
Hendricks is not alone in asking the federal government to take action on reforms at the CIHR.
Jim Woodgett, director of research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, noted that early career researchers are the “cohort that is needed to form the next generation of established researchers.”
Woodgett is calling on the federal government to inject bridge funding to “mitigate the impact of lost opportunities” as a result of CIHR reforms. He also suggests freezing any new initiatives and restoring the level of funding at CIHR to what it was in real levels in 2006. A five-year plan of five-per-cent increases would get 80 per cent of the way.
“Is that too much to ask to save Canadian health research?”
Meanwhile, the entire peer review committee of the CIHR program aimed at funding commercialization grants — the “proof of principle” program — has written to the health and science ministers and directors of the CIHR asking that the program be restored. The program was disbanded and researchers are asked to apply to the more general project scheme.
One of the outcomes of the end of the proof of principle program will be that fewer inventions coming out of Canadian universities will be protected by patent, says the committee.
“The impact will continue in future years, with fewer health care advances originating in Canada and a reduced number of institutionally derived startup companies,” wrote the committee members at their final meeting this month, before the program was disbanded.
epayne@ottawacitizen.com
查看原文...
Michael Hendricks, who studies how stress affects the development of the brain and behaviour in small roundworms, estimated that only four per cent of early-career researchers who apply for funding will be successful under CIHR reforms. Early-career researchers are defined as those within the first five years of their independent careers. Things are not much better for mid-career scientists, between seven and 10 per cent of whom can expect to be successful in applying for funding through two CIHR programs, he estimates.
Changes at the CIHR “cannot properly be called reforms,” said Hendricks. “It is called eating your young.”
Under the agency’s old funding formula, the grant application success rate was 18 per cent for early-career researchers and 19 per cent for mid-career scientists. Under the old system, success rates for senior scientists were about 21 per cent, compared to an estimated 25 per cent under the reformed system.
Hendricks says changes to the peer review system, which include an end to face-to-face meetings, disadvantage early-career scientists, as did an effort to create more long-term stable funding for senior investigators.
“As a result of the reforms, early-career scientists have seen a huge, immediate decline in opportunities and funding success.”
McGill researcher Michael Hendricks.
Scientists have told the Citizen that morale is low and some might have to close their labs because they have little prospect of getting grants to continue their work. Leading Canadian stem cell researcher Michael Rudnicki has called for management changes at the biomedical research funding agency. And one Ottawa researcher says he can no longer in good conscience advise his students, or even his children, to pursue careers in science.
Hendricks, why analyzed historic data and budget information from CIHR to reach his conclusions, wrote a letter to federal Health Minister Jane Philpott and science ministers Kirsty Duncan and Navdeep Singh Bains asking for more support for early-career scientists and an assessment of the impact of CIHR reforms.
Hendricks said he doesn’t believe the fallout for younger researchers was the intended consequence of the reforms. “The most prominent problem was flat budgets with declining purchasing power that threatened to squander the visionary effort, made prior to the Harper era, to make Canada a biomedical research leader through investigator-initiated research,” he said.
The reforms, he said, have made the situation worse.
“A wait-and-see approach to the reforms will take years and will risk squandering the scientific potential of a large cohort of young scientists recruited to Canadian research institutions.”
Hendricks is not alone in asking the federal government to take action on reforms at the CIHR.
Jim Woodgett, director of research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, noted that early career researchers are the “cohort that is needed to form the next generation of established researchers.”
Woodgett is calling on the federal government to inject bridge funding to “mitigate the impact of lost opportunities” as a result of CIHR reforms. He also suggests freezing any new initiatives and restoring the level of funding at CIHR to what it was in real levels in 2006. A five-year plan of five-per-cent increases would get 80 per cent of the way.
“Is that too much to ask to save Canadian health research?”
Meanwhile, the entire peer review committee of the CIHR program aimed at funding commercialization grants — the “proof of principle” program — has written to the health and science ministers and directors of the CIHR asking that the program be restored. The program was disbanded and researchers are asked to apply to the more general project scheme.
One of the outcomes of the end of the proof of principle program will be that fewer inventions coming out of Canadian universities will be protected by patent, says the committee.
“The impact will continue in future years, with fewer health care advances originating in Canada and a reduced number of institutionally derived startup companies,” wrote the committee members at their final meeting this month, before the program was disbanded.
epayne@ottawacitizen.com
查看原文...
