Additional Pairs of Hands or Scientists in Training? (February 4, 2011)

Last month the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) released a 28-page draft document Investing in the Future... Strategic Plan for Biomedical and Behavioral Research Training which was meant for review by its Advisory Council and which has now approved it fit dissemination.

Putting it succinctly Science's Jeffrey Mervis writes: "It's a familiar complaint: Academic researchers intent on cranking out another paper and obtaining their next grant sometimes see their students as little more than another pair of hands rather than as scientists in training." Therefore, the NIGMS is advising its grantees that they have a duty to help create a more diverse workforce. Furthermore, graduate students and postdocs supported on research grants, the most common means of NIH support for graduate students, deserve mentoring that is just as good as that offered students on institutional training grants and fellowships.

The draft document is short on detail but clear on overall goals: A training program should give students the skills to not only follow their adviser into academia but also allow pursuit of a variety of scientific career paths.

Various members of the advisory council raised several concerns.

Vern Schramm, a biochemist at Yeshiva University's medical school in New York City noted: "The goal of an R01[grant] is to discover new knowledge. This would expand it to include education and learning. Would those now become review criteria for study sections?"

NIGMS Director Jeremy Berg, who initiated developing the draft, told Professor Schramm: "We don't intend that to be the outcome." He estimated that the average faculty member would devote "1 hour per trainee per year on an IDP [individual development plan], which is hardly excessive. We don't want to burden those people who are already doing a good job [while continuing] to miss those who aren't. We need to find the sweet spot." Dr Berg made the point that a number of the individuals being supported through a PI's R01 grant "may not want an academic job... We need to remove the pejorative aspect of the term alternative careers."

In support of the draft Carolyn Bertozzi of the University of California, Berkeley, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator said:  “I really like the idea of an evaluation of the training component of an R01, but I'm wondering about how to include those who drop out and end up working at Walmart because they couldn't stand the pressure of the lab."

Denise Montell of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine was cautioned "not to discriminate against women, who are more likely to leave to raise a family."

But it was left to James Stevens of Lilly Research Laboratories in Indianapolis to ask: "Have you thought of taking all the postdocs off R01s and putting them on training grants? [Then] anyone who wanted to be a research associate would be hired as an employee," thereby separating those preparing to become independent investigators from the rest.. "It would also force graduate students to think earlier about what they want to do after graduation."

Finally, Helen Sunshine, head of the institute's Office of Scientific Review while admitting that revisiting the criteria for evaluating the results of R01 grantees posed challenges, she nevertheless assured council members that: "The reviewers come from the same background as you do. … It's a question of [achieving the right] balance."