5 ms·
The academic publishing model, and academic research in general, will be dramatically different in 15 years, maybe fewer In california, venture capital already
by aaavl2821 9y ago
The academic publishing model, and academic research in general, will be dramatically different in 15 years, maybe fewer
In california, venture capital already funds more research than the NIH ($5B vs $1.5-2B). Much of this is one step later stage than academic research but increasingly they overlap directly. VC funding for life science research is skyrocketing, and NIH funding is declining. In January 2018 alone there was $1B invested in seed or series a biotech deals which is more than Stanford gets from the NIH in two years
The fact is that the publication bias is ruining scientific quality. Anywhere from 40-75% of academic science isn't reproducible, either because of chance, poor quality control / documentation, cherry picking data or outright fraud. The list of researchers and universities that VCs and pharma will work with is quite small, and many VCs are just funding the basic science themselves rather than invest in stuff that just doesn't work half the time https://lifescivc.com/2011/03/academic-bias-biotech-failures/ https://lifescivc.com/2011/03/academic-bias-biotech-failures...
Young scientists are treated horribly by the academic world, with brilliant PhDs and postdocs with 15 years of research experience in top labs making barely minimum wage with no hope of tenure. Many universities make it very hard for students to explore non academic jobs because they realize they have the most highly educated captive workforce the world has ever seen
If a good alternative to working in academia opens up, things will change fast
- Fomite 9y agoYou're off on the NIH extramural budget by a factor of >10X.
- aaavl2821 9y agoI was referring to spending in CA although the I think I misquoted the figure as $1.5-2B; think it's $3.7B in ca Total NIH budget is like $32B. Half of that goes to basic research and some goes to non-life sci research. Life sci VC funding in 2017 was $15B. Some of that goes to admin costs obviously but not nearly as much as NIH if you look at headcount at companies https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/budget-in-brief/nih/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/budget-in-brief/nih/index.h...
- Fomite 9y agoTo be honest though, CA is the best case for VC funding, and I'm willing to wager the number of states with significant VC funding of science can be counted on your fingers. In comparison, the NIH funding is nation wide, and specifically has mechanisms for underfunded states. What do you think the ratio of funding between the NIH and life sci VC funding is in say...Idaho?
- aaavl2821 9y agoI agree. Massachusetts is maybe the only other state like that. I admittedly used an outlier example as it illustrates a trend, and I know so many scientists who dont realize 1) how hard it is these days to get tenure and 2) how much opportunity there is to do cool science outside of academia, so I use this example to show them that there are other options For what it's worth, I know there are movements to attract more VC funding to places like Pittsburgh, NYC, San Diego, Texas, North Carolina etc. still early stages, but I think in 15 years things could be very different
- inciampati 9y agoI see this situation as resulting from governmental decisions that reduce funding for research and make doing it harder. There are also bonuses to make companies that extract value from the public research sector. All this quantitative easing seems to give the capitalists money but not the scientists, unless they are happy working for the capitalists.
- breck 9y agoNIH puts over $30B into research annually. (https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget)
- aaavl2821 9y agoI was referring to CA funding not total budget. VC funds $15B / year; top 15 pharma funds $75B. VC and NIh funding are closer when you consider overhead and non-life sci research