By Harry Dankowicz*

Before the 1800s, it was common to practice a pattern of two distinct periods of sleep during the night, separated by several hours of wakefulness. Nighttime was defined by the absence of natural light, and caution was thrown to the wind by anyone daring to venture out. With the advent of artificial sources of light and more vigorous nighttime socializing, this pattern was successively replaced by the single contiguous sleep cycle to which we are accustomed today.

But in recent years, our sleep habits are being strained by the 24-hour society, driven by demands for work and social flexibility in a globalized economy, and with constant access to computers and electronic networks. In data from the Swedish Living Conditions Surveys, self-reported trouble with sleep nearly doubled among all subjects 16 years or older between 1980 and 2013, with a particularly rapid rise among young women between the ages of 16 and 24, from 9% to 28%.

As head of the sleep and fatigue research unit at the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University in Sweden, Deputy Director Göran Kecklund is acutely aware of the dangers to public health that result from family- and work-related stress and poor sleep. On March 26, 2015, he emceed the Stress Research Institute’s annual outreach day. Dr. Kecklund provided background on the connection between sleep, health, and stress in an interview earlier the same day. The interview has been edited for length and flow.

Q. What is the connection between sleep and stress?

A. If you have a high stress level during the day, as long as you sleep well, you get the necessary recovery and recuperation that you need. You start off the next day being refreshed and prepared for a demanding day with high stress. That will not be dangerous to your health or affect your daytime performance.

When it comes to sleep quality, of course, duration of sleep is important. But the content of sleep is also important. If you are relaxed when you go to sleep and have a built-up large sleep need, then you will more or less automatically have lots of deep sleep. And that’s very good for you. However, if you have a high stress level when you go to bed and you have a lot of apprehension, negative thoughts of the next day; that could reduce the level of deep sleep. That means that you will be less refreshed—you have not obtained sufficient recovery—which means that you start off being a little bit fatigued already in the morning. You might have to put in lots of extra effort to be able to maintain good work performance, and the price you pay by putting in extra effort is higher stress.

Q. What is the connection between stress, sleep, and disease?

A. If you have lots of stress, but you also have good recovery, you have very good probability of not developing any stress-related diseases. But if the stress has an impact on sleep, then you would expect that these recuperative processes would not work. This will cause damage to your brain, but also to many other regulatory systems, that in the long run increases the risk of developing severe disease, for instance, coronary heart disease, like heart infarction, and psychological diseases, like depression.

Q. What was the reason for focusing on women, stress and health at this year’s outreach event?

A. That’s one of the most significant public health questions in Sweden. There is a lot of concern, in particular with respect to younger women, who seem to have had a negative trend during the last years. They have increased stress and increased sleep problems despite the fact that, from a biological point of view, their sleep should be excellent. Often you are at the peak when you are 20-25 with respect to the amount of deep sleep you can produce. You have the possibility to extend sleep if you have been sleep deprived, which should be an advantage. But obviously that doesn’t work. And we think it is an important question for society to learn more about, to discuss what we should do about it.

*The author is Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Sources:

Interview conducted on March 26, 2015 with

• Göran Kecklund, Associate Professor
  Deputy Director
  Head, Sleep and Fatigue Division
  Stress Research Institute
  Stockholm University
  SE-106 91 Stockholm
  Phone: +46 8 5537 8912
  E-mail: kecklund@su.se

Scholarly publications:

• Schwarz, J., Lindberg, E., Kecklund, G., “Sleep as a Means of Recovery and Restitution in Women: The Relation with Psychosocial Stress and Health,” in Psychosocial Stress and Cardiovascular Disease in Women (eds. Orth- Gomér, K., Schneiderman, N., Vaccarino, V., Deter, H.-C.), pp. 107-127, Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2015. http://goo.gl/XYf39e

Government reports:

• The UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, “The 24-hour,” Postnote, No. 250, November 2005. http://goo.gl/JP3Qea
• Bremberg, S., “Youth, Stress, and Psychological non-Wellbeing,” Department of Education of Sweden, in Swedish, August 15, 2006. http://goo.gl/hZAuGN

News stories:

• Hegarty, S. “The myth of the eight-hour sleep,” BBC Magazine, February 22, 2012. http://goo.gl/6Hy59F

Multimedia/Data:

• Statistics Sweden, “The Swedish Living Conditions Surveys,” http://goo.gl/AHHGjJ

By Harry Dankowicz*

For Helena Schiller, a researcher at Stockholm University’s Stress Research Institute, its March 26, 2015, on-campus Stress Research Day was an opportunity to reach out to the general public, and to invite their questions about the association between sleep and overall well-being.

With funding from the Swedish Retail and Wholesale Development Council, Schiller has been researching the use of cognitive behavioral therapy in workplace support groups for addressing stress-related sleep problems. In these aptly named “sleep schools”, Schiller trains participants to use wake and sleep diaries to uncover patterns of behavior, and to adjust these behaviors incrementally in order to improve sleep quality and overall mental health.

“What they say is that they are really frustrated about their sleeping problems,” said Schiller in an interview. “Some people, they say that the only thing that I want to do in life is to sleep. Some people are angry, some are really sad about their situation.” But, the main message, explained Schiller, is to understand that what you do during the day will predict your ability to benefit from the regenerative aspects of sleep at night.

The focus of the 2015 Stress Research Day was on women, stress, and sleep, in recognition of a significant increase in self-reported sleep problems across the Swedish population over the past 30+ years, and higher rates among women of all ages relative to men, as reported in the Swedish Living Conditions Surveys.

According to Schiller, the negative association between stress and successful recovery during sleep is partially due to an insufficient amount of deep sleep. For example, as shown in a 2007 paper in Psychology & Behavior, people with symptoms of burnout often experience frequent arousals from sleep during the night, and consequently more fragmented sleep.

In her presentation at the Stress Research Day, psychology professor Petra Lindfors focused on the connection between body and mind or, in the Swedish original, “kropp” and “knopp”. In a 2008 paper in the Journal of Occupational Health, Lindfors and her co-authors wrote that “recurring and long-term stress-related activations of various physiological systems, without any possibility for rest and recovery, adds to the wear and tear of the body’s resources thereby increasing the risk for future health problems.” By studying a group of 25 male and female white-collar workers, they showed that “poorer rest and recovery were associated with higher levels of morning cortisol” in subjects’ saliva. They argued that measurements of this stress hormone could therefore be an alternative to subjective self-ratings for understanding how rest and recovery affect body function.

A subsequent independent study, led by Dr. Frida Eek from Lund University Hospital in Sweden, sought to reproduce these findings for a larger sample of 581 subjects. As stated in a 2012 paper in Psychoneuroendocrinology, however, the research results “failed to confirm previous findings of rather strong associations” between sleep and recovery and salivary cortisol. In recent e-mail correspondence, Lindfors attributed the conflicting research results to the use of different self-rating questionnaires and different protocols for measuring cortisol. In addition, she pointed to the importance of having direct personal contact with study subjects as absolutely essential for ensuring compliance with instructions, something that was not possible in the case of Eek’s research, given the large number of subjects.

Such differences between nominally similar studies are quite common in the literature. They may be a reason for some of the public confusion regarding scientific research, especially in the behavioral and medical sciences.

They also make it difficult to assess disagreement, as well as agreement, between distinct studies. This includes the observation in Eek’s work that “women who needed more than three days to recover after a work week had significantly higher [rise in morning cortisol] compared to women who felt recovered in less than three days,” while a different pattern was found in men, consistent with a preliminary finding in Lindfors’s paper.

But audience members at the Stress Research Day who expected a deep exploration of the uncertain aspects of stress and sleep research were left wanting. And perhaps this is the challenge of public outreach and scientific literacy: engendering confidence in the scientific method without hiding controversy, and empowering the public with useful information without being patronizing.

*The author is Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Sources:

Interview conducted on March 27, 2015 with

• Helena Schiller
  Stress Research Institute
  Stockholm University
  SE-106 91 Stockholm
  Phone: +46 8 5537 8910
  E-mail: schiller@su.se

E-mail correspondence on March 27 and March 30, 2015 with

• Petra Lindfors
  Department of Psychology
  Stockholm University
  SE-106 91 Stockholm
  Phone: +46-8-163893
  E-mail: pls@psychology.se

Scholarly publications:

• Åkerstedt, T., Kecklund, G., Gillberg, M., “Sleep and Sleepiness in Relation to Stress and Displaced Work Hours,” Psychosocial & Behavior 92(1-2), pp. 250-255, 2007. http://goo.gl/F4DLyv
• Gustafsson, K., Lindfors, P., Aronsson, G., Lundberg, U., “Relationships between Self-Rating of Recovery from Work and Morning Salivary Cortisol,” Journal of Occupational Health 50, pp. 24-30, 2008. http://goo.gl/WjcM1T
• Eek, F., Karlson, B., Garde, A.H., Hansen, Å.M., Orbek, P., ”Cortisol, Sleep, and Recovery – Some Gender Differences but no Straight Associations,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 37, pp. 56-64, 2012. http://goo.gl/MIwHJ9

Multimedia/Data:

• Statistics Sweden, “The Swedish Living Conditions Surveys,” http://goo.gl/AHHGjJ

By Harry Dankowicz*

As an assistant professor in plant biology who studies the benefits of resource exchange between distinct species, Katy Heath knows that her primary source of research funding is the National Science Foundation (NSF), a government agency charged with supporting curiosity-driven basic science and engineering, outside of medicine.

Heath, who joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010, is the principal investigator on two current NSF grants, investigating biodiversity in a mountainous region of the Pacific Northwest, and the impact of fertilizer use on the mutually beneficial relationship between legumes and soil bacteria.

As a recipient of public funding for her research, Heath is also aware of the need to ensure that her science reaches outside the lab.

Indeed, since 1997, each research proposal submitted to the NSF has been evaluated based on two distinct merit review criteria: its “potential to advance knowledge”—known as its intellectual merit—and its “potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes”—known as its broader impacts.

In the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, Congress made explicit mention of eight such desirable outcomes, including “increased participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM” and “increased public scientific literacy.”

But in recent years, expectations on NSF-funded researchers to demonstrate broader impacts have increased, partially as a result of studies showing an occasionally perfunctory attitude by both investigators and reviewers. For example, a 2015 paper in BioScience argued that “the public at large might easily conclude that the [Broader Impacts Criterion] is not being implemented.” In examining proposals submitted to the NSF Division of Environmental Biology, it found significant underreporting of proposed broader impact activities in publicly available abstracts for funded projects.

Such abstracts describing Heath’s ongoing NSF-funded projects speak to their proposed broader impact activities, for example the development and wide sharing of training materials for use by science educators in ecology, and the organization of resources and events to enhance the diversity among researchers in the biological sciences.

In a recent interview, Heath said: “I think the intention of the broader impacts criterion … is for the research to actually step out of … the realm of intellectual merit, which is publishing in specialized journals, to people who are already like you. … Somehow you’ve got to get it out.” But, “writing in your NSF grant about the broader significance doesn’t actually make a broader impact. In order to make a broader impact, you have to do something.”

And Heath has indeed done something. In 2012, she co-created a graduate-level course providing hands-on experiences in educational outreach and science communication. In a 2014 paper in BioScience, Heath and her collaborators outlined the course goals, including training students to “forge community connections that enhance outreach opportunities” and “design better broader impacts in their proposals.” Said Heath, “Engaging more with the broader impacts of your own science is good. It’s good for us to learn to communicate with other human beings. It actually makes our science better, I think. I have gotten questions from family members or from kids … that I’ve never thought of before when I try to communicate what I am doing. So I think there is real value there, for us as individuals.”

But Heath recognizes the difficulty in determining the impact that outreach has on nonscientists’ perception of science as a public good. As discussed in a 2012 paper in American Sociological Review, public distrust of science has been fueled by ongoing controversies about climate change, evolution, and vaccination policies, including a measurable effect of political ideology, especially among conservatives. Data from the NSF Science and Engineering Indicators 2014 survey show that the public’s support for federal funding of basic research has hovered around 80% for the past 30 years. At the same time, however, the percentage of respondents who would be happy if their son or daughter chose a career in science has increased from 67% in 1983 to 80% in 2012.

From Heath’s perspective, the increased expectations on NSF-funded researchers pose a risk of “runaway selection”, resulting in increasingly elaborate efforts to demonstrate societal benefits, while taking time away from the intellectual merit of the proposed science. After all, not all curiosity-driven research will ever have societal impact. “And that’s part of the deal,” said Heath. “You have to put out a wide net if you want to get those discoveries. … If you are not a scientist, if you are not a basic scientist, I think that’s really hard to stomach.”

*The author is Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a past and current recipient of US federal research funding, including from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Air and Space Administration (NASA), and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Sources:

Interview conducted on April 21, 2015 with

• Katy Heath, Assistant Professor
  Department of Plant Biology
  249 Morrill Hall
  505 S Goodwin, M/C 116
  Urbana, IL  61801
  Phone: (217) 265-5473
  E-mail: kheath@illinois.edu

Scholarly publications:

• Heath, K.D., Bagley, E., Berkey, A.J.M., et al., “Amplify the Signal: Graduate Training in Broader Impacts of Scientific Research,” BioScience Advance Access, April 16, 2014. http://goo.gl/K6afHg
• Watts, S. George, M.D., Levey, D.J., “Achieving Broader Impacts in the National Science Foundation, Division of Environmental Biology,” BioScience Advance Access, February 25, 2015. http://goo.gl/wxJAi5
• Gauchat, G., “Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010,” American Sociological Review 77(2), pp. 167–187, 2012. http://goo.gl/vJYBRt
• Frodeman, R., Parker, J., “Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact: The National Science Foundation’s Broader Impacts Criterion and the Question of Peer Review,” Social Epistemology 23(3–4), pp. 337–345, 2009. http://goo.gl/2RoOqI

Public Abstracts:

• Heath, K., Hu, F.S., “Collaborative Research: How Mountains Maintain Biodiversity: A Multidisciplinary Characterization of a Pleistocene Refugium in the Interior Pacific Northwest,” National Science Foundation, Award Number http://goo.gl/MZFhDS
• Heath, K., “Collaborative Research: Evolution in LTER Experiments: Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Long-Term Nitrogen Addition for the Legume-Rhizobium Mutualism,” National Science Foundation, Award Number 1257938. http://goo.gl/mJ8utJ

Independent research reports:

• Pew Research Center, Public and Scientists’ Views on Science and Society. January 29, 2015. http://goo.gl/nGtEhL

Government reports:

• National Science Foundation, Perspectives on Broader Impacts. NSF 15-008. http://goo.gl/N1LiM6
• National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2014. Arlington VA: National Science Foundation, NSB 14-01, 2014. http://goo.gl/d0N9E5

Federal legislation:

• The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. http://goo.gl/2V9h6w

News articles:

• Markin, K.M., “Don’t Underestimate NSF’s New Grant-Submission Rules,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 9, 2013. http://goo.gl/PEHZSp

By Harry Dankowicz*, Mary Rogers, and Meredith Staub

In 1945, a report commissioned by President Roosevelt recommended the founding of an agency charged with “promoting the flow of new scientific knowledge and the development of scientific talent in our youth.” Today, NSF, the National Science Foundation, with funds appropriated by Congress, provides a quarter of federal funding for scientific research at close to $7bn annually.

The original recommendation emphasized that “scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.”

Some argue, however, that scientists should be concerned not only with the content of their research, but also how it’s perceived by the public.

In a recent interview in the LA Times, John Culberson, republican from Texas, suggested that as the NSF reviews grant proposals, “a question they should ask on each one is how will the principal purpose of this research project look either in a headline on the New York Times or in a tweet.” As chairman of the House subcommittee on commerce, justice, and science, Culberson’s words added to an ongoing controversy on congressional oversight of federal research funding.

But can the merits of a proposed research project be summarized in a 140-character tweet?

Rat massages. The chemical composition of coral. The sexual behavior of worms. Dog urine. As Twitter memes go, these things might not seem like valuable subjects of scientific study. In reality, all four led to major breakthroughs, saving thousands of premature infants, producing insights into diabetes that won the National Medal of Science. And social science research funded by NSF eventually resulted in $60bn in revenue to the federal government for commercial access to the telecommunications spectrum.

In 2014, the scientists behind these and similar projects were honored by the Golden Goose Award, established to recognize that work that “may once have been viewed as unusual, odd or obscure” could lead to important discoveries benefitting society in significant ways.

What future discoveries hide behind today’s innocuous Twitter messages? Hashtag: wait and see!

*Harry Dankowicz is Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a past and current recipient of US federal research funding, including from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Air and Space Administration (NASA).

Sources:

• Bush, V., “Science The Endless Frontier,” Office of Scientific Research and Development, 1945. https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/vbush1945.htm
• National Science Foundation Presents FY 2015 Budget Request, Press Release 14-031, March 10, 2014. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=130728
• Hiltzik, M. “Inside GOP science, part 2: the brawl over National Science Foundation grants,” Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2015. http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82964335/
• Golden Goose Award, http://www.goldengooseaward.org/information-for-the-press/, accessed on April 17, 2015.

By Harry Dankowicz*

The welder pictured on the billboard strikes a pose of power and confidence.

In light-brown overalls, brandishing a welding torch and helmet, and accompanied by the phrase “We can do anything men can do” in dark red riveted lettering, she symbolizes attainment of equal stature, independently of gender. But this recent ad campaign, sponsored by the Ad Council and GoRedForWomen.org, aims at the heart, specifically cardiovascular disease as a cause of one third of deaths in women. As the campaign literature exclaims: “it’s not just a man’s disease.”

And it isn’t. Rates of death in women due to cardiovascular disease are, indeed, similar to those in men. Many of the symptoms of disease, and risk factors, are also common between the genders.

But this is only half of the story. In recent decades, medical science has found that caring even for the subtle differences between men and women may improve treatment outcomes, reduce adverse harm, and provide the proverbial ounce of prevention. Public funding for biomedical science is increasingly investing in research that highlights such differences.

The 1990 founding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) brought focus to the science of differences between men and women in the occurrence, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, known as gender-specific medicine. That such differences were found in autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders, cancer, and diabetes, moved women’s medicine beyond its earlier focus on reproductive health.

Nevertheless, in a May 2014 Nature article, ORWH Director Janine Clayton and NIH Director Francis Collins argued that this growing body of evidence for sex- and gender-related differences has not led to “a corresponding revolution in experimental design and analyses in cell and animal research – despite multiple calls to action.” Instead, “over-reliance on male animals and cells in preclinical research obscures key sex differences that could guide clinical studies,” and could cause harm by ignoring differences in the reactions of men and women to drugs.

One such danger prompted an FDA safety announcement in October 2013, highlighting an increased risk of mental impairment for women relative to men from the use of certain insomnia medication. Experimental studies of changes over time in the levels of the administered drug in the body, so-called pharmacokinetic trials, showed values after 8 hours that were above those known to reduce alertness, for example, during driving. The FDA announcement required that the recommended dosage for women be cut in half.

Sex-related differences in gene expression, so-called sexual dimorphism, are a likely source for such observed differences between women and men.

By studying gene activity in mice, a paper in Genome Research in 2006 found sexually dimorphic expression in tens of thousands of genes in liver, fat, muscle, and brain cells. These included genes involved in the immune response, as well as in the body’s processing of fatty acids, steroids and lipids. While large differences in a fraction of the genes were likely associated with sex-specific functions, the team led by Dr. Xia Yang of the University of California, Los Angeles, put the spotlight on smaller, but significant differences in the vast majority of dimorphic genes found in the experiment. These, they argued, were possible contributors to “sex-biased susceptibility to common diseases,” for example, “in the incidence or progression of neurological and psychiatric diseases.”

In their Nature article, Clayton and Collins announced proposed changes to NIH policy, aiming to “transform how science is done.” These would require researchers seeking funding to develop plans for including “male and female cells and animals in preclinical studies,” ensuring that sex- and gender-related differences would not be overlooked. In September 2014, ORWH announced a $10 million allocation of supplemental research funding, on top of already awarded funds, to 82 recipients for taking steps to support comparisons based on sex differences.

Ultimately, such efforts may lead to a more nuanced understanding of the health and wellness of both men and women that avoids biased stereotypes. Until such a time, National Wear Red Day, on the first Friday of February of each year, continues to raise awareness of heart disease and stroke in women, and the ways in which men and women are the same, for better or worse.

*The author is Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a past and current recipient of US federal research funding, including from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Air and Space Administration (NASA).

Sources:

Journal publications:

• Yang, X., Schadt, E.E., Wang, S., Wang, H., Arnold, A.P., Ingram-Drake, L., Drake, T.A., Lusis, A.J. “Tissue-specific expression and regulation of sexually dimorphic genes in mice,” Genome Research 16(8), pp. 995-1004, 2006. http://goo.gl/C0Y2XL
• Greenblatt, D.J., Harmatz, J.S., Singh, N.N., Steinberg, F., Roth, T., Moline, M.L., Harris, S.C., Kapil, R.P., “Gender differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of zolpidem following sublingual administration,” The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 54(3), pp. 282-290, 2014. http://goo.gl/MGfgWa
• Verster, J.C., Roth, T. “Gender differences in highway driving performance after administration of sleep medication: a review of the literature,” Traffic Injury Prevention 13(3), pp. 286-292, 2012. http://goo.gl/yI627q

Federal reports:

• Heron, M., “Deaths: Leading Causes for 2008,” National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 60, No. 6, 2012. http://goo.gl/RI8Nyh
• US Food and Drug Administration, “FDA Drug Safety Communication: Risk of next-morning impairment after use of insomnia drugs; FDA requires lower recommended doses for certain drugs containing zolpidem (Ambien, Ambien CR, Edluar, and Zolpimist),” 2013. http://goo.gl/3MQAEc

News releases:

• National Institutes of Health, “New supplemental awards apply sex and gender lens to NIH-funded research,” September 23, 2014. http://goo.gl/Ut64wN

News stories:

• Clayton, J.A., Collins, F.S. “Policy: NIH to balance sex in cell and animal studies,” Nature, 509(7500), 2014. http://goo.gl/GvMvdU
• Rabesandratana, T. “Adding Sex-and-Gender Dimensions to Your Research,” ScienceCareers, March 13, 2014. http://goo.gl/6xTV7D
• Caryn Rabin, R. “Health Researchers Will Get $10.1 Million to Counter Gender Bias in Studies,” New York Times, September 23, 2014. http://goo.gl/JUSdRn

Multimedia/Data:

• Ad Council, Women’s Heart Disease Campaign, Welder Asset. http://goo.gl/dQIax3
• National Population Estimates for the 2010s, US Census Bureau. http://goo.gl/sJERV1

By Harry Dankowicz*

Following the uncovering of racial disparities in the awarding of biomedical research grants, it was all hands on deck at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest source of such funding in the world. A 2011 Science paper found that the number of NIH research project grants awarded to Black applicants between 2000 and 2006 was only about half of that predicted by the success rate of White applicants. Led by Dr. Donna K. Ginther of the University of Kansas, the investigators could not explain the striking gap of 10 percentage points in success rate by differences in training, home institution, past funding, or publication record. This called for a more careful analysis of the influence of bias in research funding, and its mitigation.

“When the Ginther paper came out and showed the racial disparities, people were distressed by it and took it very seriously and the NIH Director took direct action to look at this and try to figure out what to do,” said Dr. Monica A. Basco, Executive Secretary for the ACD Diversity Working Group Subcommittee on Peer Review at NIH in a recent phone interview.

A publication in the journal Research Policy, available online in January 2015, is “a reasonable attempt to try to look at the problem” said Basco. In this study, computer simulation was used to explore the effects of bias on the awarding of research grants. Remarkably, the analysis revealed that even a bias as low as 2.8% of the maximum possible total score during proposal review would result in a significant reduction in the likelihood of funding relative to the absence of bias. “If this is reflective of the real world, and that’s a big if,” said Dr. T. Eugene Day, author of the study, “then what that means is that these biases are in fact resulting in grants which otherwise would have been funded, which are theoretically of better quality, … not getting funded in favor of grants which are not as good.” Day is Principal Health Systems Specialist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and was interviewed by phone.

The NIH Working Group on Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce was established in 2011 by NIH Director Dr. Francis S. Collins to “address the unacceptable status quo.” The group reported that 73% of applications from Blacks between 1999 and 2009 received initial review scores that were so low that they were excluded from full panel discussion and further consideration of funding, compared to 59% of applications from Whites.

In his paper, Day used computer algorithms to create a fictional version of this review process. The computer first assigned a measure of intrinsic quality to each of 2,000 proposals using values between 1 and 9 according to a bell curve centered at 5. Proposals were then randomly assigned scores between 1 and 9 by groups of three simulated reviewers with varying degrees of bias against half of the proposals, associated with a non-preferred class of investigators. “For each grant, I assume that the reviewers are reasonably good at finding that intrinsic quality, but have a variance around how perfectly they identify it. Then, for the biased runs, one or three reviewers would have a systematic bias … which increased the mean score, but did not influence the randomness,” said Day. Biased reviewers were thus designed to give higher average scores, and thereby on average reduce the chance of funding for the non-preferred class.

While recognizing the limitations of the computer-aided study, particularly the lack of actual NIH data on the initial scoring of proposals, “the point [Day] is trying to make is an important point, which is bias can play a role and it can cause harm,” said Basco. “One of the limitations is in available methodology for directly assessing bias. It’s hard to do that.” A 2014 NIH Peer Review Challenge awarded cash prizes to ideas from the public on ways to detect bias, as well as strengthen fairness and impartiality in peer review. “It’s a problem that lots of people have been working on,” said Basco. “We are taking it seriously, but you can’t just throw out some quick and easy solutions without working it through and we are committed to doing this right.”

*The author is Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a past and current recipient of US federal research funding, including from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Air and Space Administration (NASA).

Sources:

Interviews conducted on February 10 and 12, 2015 with

• T. Eugene Day, D.Sc.
  Principal Health Systems Specialist
  Office of Safety and Medical Operations, AE 25H
  The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
  34th Street and Civic Center Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19104
  E-mail: dayt@email.chop.edu
• Monica A. Basco, Ph.D.
  Coordinator, Early Career Reviewer Program
  Exec Sec, ACD Diversity Working Group Subcommittee on Peer Review
  Center for Scientific Review
  National Institutes of Health
  6701 Rockledge Drive, Room 2170 MSC 7808
  Bethesda, MD 20892 (20817 for overnight delivery)
  E-mail: BascoMA@mail.nih.gov

Journal publications:

• Ginther, D.K., Schaffer, W.T., Schnell, J., Masimore, B., Liu, F., Haak, L.L., Kington, R. “Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards,” Science 333(6045), pp. 1015-1019, 2011. http://goo.gl/H2xt6Z
• Day, T.E., “The Big Consequences of Small Biases: A Simulation of Peer Review,” Research Policy, in press, available online January 28, 2015. http://goo.gl/nI5Bos

Federal reports:

• National Institutes of Health, Draft Report of the Advisory Committee to the Director Working Group on Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce, June 13, 2012. http://goo.gl/89j0uy

Blogs:

• Nakamura, R., Rockey, S., “New Efforts to Maximize Fairness in NIH Peer Review,” Rock Talk, May 29, 2014. http://goo.gl/15UTGu

News releases:

• National Institutes of Health, “CSR Announces Winners of Its America COMPETES Challenge to Maximize Fairness in NIH Peer Review,” September 2, 2014. http://goo.gl/vhJIQL
• National Institutes of Health, “NIH-Commissioned Study Identifies Gaps in NIH Funding Success Rates for Black Researchers,” August 18, 2011. http://goo.gl/qJZDaC

News stories:

• Chang, K. “Black Scientists Less Likely to Win Federal Research Grants, Study Reports,” New York Times, August 18, 2011. http://goo.gl/qLI33i
• Kaiser, J. “NIH Launches Effort To Boost Diversity of Biomedical Research Workforce,” ScienceInsider, December 7, 2012. http://goo.gl/Qf0e01

By Harry Dankowicz*

The claim that public research universities are regional engines of economic development, made in a February 18 media advisory by University of Illinois President Robert Easter, has been heard repeatedly in recent years, as state appropriations for higher education have dropped significantly.

A 2013 report from the State of Illinois Board of Higher Education showed an inflation-adjusted decrease of 27.4%, or $565M, in state funding for public universities between fiscal year 1999 and 2014. Illinois Governor Rauner’s budget, described in this Illinois Public Media News story, includes a proposed further cut of state funding to higher education by close to a third.  This is likely to again push university officials to argue for the contribution of their institutions to the state’s economic well-being.

One way in which public universities make good on the public’s trust and resources, in addition to their educational mission, is through technology transfer, the effort to translate research and innovation by faculty and students into products or services.

As described in this February 19 blog post by Leslie Millar-Nicholson, Director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Office of Technology Management, bridge financing for commercialization to university-affiliated inventors resulted in the launching in February 2015 of Revolution Medicines, founded by Prof. Martin Burke of the Department of Chemistry, with $45M financing from the venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures.

Similarly, a February 17 e-mail to College of Engineering faculty and staff from Dean Andreas Cangellaris announced the Faculty Entrepreneurial Fellows program, with $250k in proof-of-concept funds, dedicated space for projects and teams, and close integration with training programs in entrepreneurship offered by the Technology Entrepreneur Center. Said the e-mail: “We want [the program] to fundamentally redefine the role of faculty in innovation and, in doing so, bolster its value to the education of the Illinois engineer.“

*The author is Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a past and current recipient of US federal research funding, including from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Air and Space Administration (NASA).

In 1945, in Science – the Endless Frontier, then Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Vannevar Bush, presented President Roosevelt with an argument for the establishment of a national agency for public funding of scientific research, what became the National Science Foundation.

Under the heading Scientific Progress is Essential, Bush argued that

“Progress in the war against disease depends upon a flow of new scientific knowledge. New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature, and the application of that knowledge to practical purposes. Similarly, our defense against aggression demands new knowledge so that we can develop new and improved weapons. This essential, new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research.”

The current research infrastructure in the US and elsewhere is in large part a result of the initiative that resulted from Bush’s report and similar observations made throughout the past 70 years.

But the understanding of the purpose of scientific research and the mechanisms by which it can or should be supported remains a work in progress, as much affected by politics as by societal need. As a majority of the funding is governmental, its raison d’etre falls under the broad category of a social contract between the general public and the immediate beneficiaries of tax-based financial support.

Although this is not unlike many other forms of contract between parties at some distance from one another, this blog seeks to explore the aspects of this arrangement that also put it at greater risk of dissolution.

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