Transcripts For CSPAN3 Federal Funding For Scientific Resear

CSPAN3 Federal Funding For Scientific Research October 19, 2017

I this hearing is an hour. I want to thank everybody for getting here sort of in a rush. Were going to have to vote a little after 3 00. I think theres like six votes and there may not be a rezmption of the hearing. So were going to get to it and have a good discussion. Today were going to look at the federal governments role in funding research. Im concerned that government system of supporting research have inefficient and often incents haves the wrong thing which leads to wasted taxpayer dollars. Weve posted examples like this National Science Foundation Study which had money being spent on ugandan gambling habits and we do it year after year. Senator langford found investigating if kids dont like food that has been sneezed on. Are you more or less likely to eat the food in the buffet line if someone sneezes on it. And who could forget the shrimp found on the treadmill. I remember as a kid in the 1970s seeing senator william describe wastes such as this as he gave his Golden Fleece awards and here we are still with the same kind of questions. Part of the problem is the old addage publish or perish. Researchers that publish are more likely to get funding. So how do unique funded . Some can say who should review and make recommendations on their grant. So the people getting the money can recommend who approves giving them the money. Thats right researchers get to pick who gives them the funding. Doesnt sound very objective. Some recommend reviewers who will be echampions for your work. While they suggest disqualifying those with scientific disagreement with you. So we say find people to agree with you and get them on the committee. If you know anyone who already disagrees with you, keep them off the committee. This is baking in bias and its unacceptable. So ive introduced ledge slashz that will further require inparshiality on grand review panels. And downstream funding or taking original grant money and giving it to other researchers for projects not consistent with the original grant. The federal government gives money who gives it to someone else who may give it to a third or fourth party. None of this is published in public data bases. One example was a stud ate that its intent was what makes for the puffeerfect first date . The original grant to study how scientists collaborate on Scientific Research. So they were going to study collaboration on Scientific Research and somehow gauts to what makes for a perfect first date. Its difficult to discover how much they cost. So my bill would require all subgrantssu subgrants be fully reported, approved and made public. We found many grants are issued for rational but broad Research Subjects and then used for ridiculous ansillary projects. One took money to study drug and alcohol abuse and then published a paper on how to pick the best wines for your pallet. Im sure it must have been interesting to the journal ed edit editors. So our bill insures were spending our money wisely. Why should we do this . We spend 700 billion more than we take in and we have a 20 trillion debt. Its inexcusable to not Pay Attention to how we spend it and a Taxpayer Advocate that can report to congress about such follies. Our bill also requires that committees reviewing grants for at least one researcher from a scientific field to further remove personal bias. The idea is to have a scientist from important areas of research such as cancer, diabetes sit in on review committees that would review grants for wine taesingitaesinsting. Maybe someone would say we have a lot of people with heart disease. Maybe the shrimp on a treadmill is not something we have to study or maybe the money could be better spent somewhere else. The last problem ill discuss is replicatability. This means the study cannot be duplicated by other scientists to produce statistically similar results. Journal readers and editors dont get excited about negative results, so the bias is towards funding studies that prove a premise as opposed to those that disprove a premise. My bill would create greater transparency. This would allow the public at large to pay tax hope some will say the general public doesnt understand science. But i dont think you need a ph. D. To understand people are less likely to choose food thats been sneeds on and they dont want that kind of research either. Thank you, chairman paul for holding this hearing today and id like to join chairman paul in thanking our witnesses for taking the time to be with us here today. I look forward to hearing your testimony. One of the essential tasks is to engage in honest evaluations of the public investments we make as a nation and whether or not these investments are indeed worth while. This is for the taxpayer and im grateful to have an opportunity to do so in a collaborative bipartisan way. Were here today to discuss federal funding for scient scientificing research which i believe remains a necessary investment in our future. Its the seed corn of inovation and new discoveries and its led to discoveries that have had profound impacts on Public Health, safety and our quality of life. Federally funded research has resulted in Widespread Adoption of technologies. Gps satellites, mri imaging and inhuman genoem project. This results in Economic Growth and leads to the creation of 10s of thousands of jobs in entirely new sectors of the economy. It inspires the next generation to believe the sky is the limit and that no challenge is impossible. Even as the share of federal investment remains at a historic low as a percentage of gross domestic product, supporting federally funded Research Remains as important as ever to maintain americas competitive edge. Targeted federal investments in leadership can accelerate and encourage private Sector Innovation that might not have otherwise occurred. We should recognize the federal and private contributions to the Development Enterprise are not perfect substitutes for one another. But instead work in tandem working in different stages in the r and, d cycle. Last week i was proud to present Bipartisan Legislation known as the American Innovation and competitiveness act which was signed into law in january of this year. The bill was a product of a yearlong effort that began with a series of round Table Discussions with representatives from science, education, business and Economic Development communities on how to improve the American Research and Innovation Ecosystem. It reauthorized a number of important programs that strength innovation and advanced manufacturing, grow our skilled work force sgh hans american competitiveness around the world. It included a number of provisions aimed at reducing regulatory and administrative burdens on researchers so they can spend more of their time on research and less on paperwork. It also reafirmed the independent merit review process that guides funding decisions and insures Research Proposals are judged on the merits by peers in the Scientific Community and without bias. While certain basic Research Projects that receive federal funding have silly sounding titles, further examination may reveal the true scientific merit and broader impacts of that work. Before a proposal gets one penny of funding, reviewers have to consider it based on criteria that include whether the proposal increases competitiveness, advances health and welfare or supports the defense. Its worth noting only one in five proposals receive nsf funding at all, or that its required to justify to the public why these proposals were lucky enough to see funding. It can be hard to quantify or predict exactly where the science will lead. Rather than inject politics, our discussion showed instead concentrate how to safeguard discovery inherent in scientific discovery while making sure funding remains fully available to taxpayers. Part of this is remove barriers. Scientists should be prepared to engage in a Robust Exchange of informationing with the general public about the goals and benefits of their research. The discussion today is an important one. Our country faces critical environment and economic challenges in the years ahead. But we must not shy away from them head on and leveraging our Research Enterprise to create a better tomorrow. Thank you for your time today. I look forward to the discussion. Thank you, senator peters. With that ill begin by introducing our first witness. Hes the co founder and executive director for the center of open science at the university of virginia. He hold as ph. D. From yale and professor of psychology at the university of virginia. Chairman paul, Ranking Member peters, on behalf of myself and the center for open science, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the it funding of Scientific Research to maximize the return on those investments. Science may be humanities most important longterm investment. The ability to accumulate knowledge has profound consequences on american society. Sn some of the impact are directly anticipated in the project aims. But much of the impact is indirect. Research often leads to unexpected insights. And these unexpected direction kz produce returns many orders of magnitude larger than the investment. There are opportunities to nurture the incentive in science. In 2002 i became a professor that university of virginia. My group does fundamental research on cognition, thoughts and feelings that occur outside of conscious control. And my lab has had federal support from nih and nsf. Since 2013 ive been on extended leave from the university because a graduate student and i started the senter for open science. It has a mission to increase openness of research and has received support from nsf, darpa and iarpa. Transparency and reprodu reproduceability are core values of science. When i make a claim, you can believe it based on my authority as an expert or how confident i seem but these are not sufficient for scientific claims. I need to show you how i arrived at the claim. By showing you, you can make an independent assessment. You might recognize a flaw, think of an alternative interpretation or have an idea of how to extend what i died learn more. Moreover i give you the opportunity to reproduce the evidence. If you can independently obtain similar results, then our confidence in the claim increases. The reason for the center of open sciences objectives is it sometimes undercuts the core values of reproduceability. The culture rewards novel, positive, clean results and there are few incentives for being open or reproduceable. As a consequence we may be producing exciting results at the cost of credibility of those results. And some evidence presents its lower than desirable than expected. Federal Research Funding agencies only have taken initial steps to address it. If trans transparency and reproduceability are put in, we may reduce waste and increase discovery and ultimately even greater returns on taxpayer dollars. I will close with a specific suggestion they could use to help firther the Scientific Research and that is to set the default to open for papers, data and materials. In 2013 federal agencies were asked to make a plan for improving the management and accessibility for the research they fund. Most agencies have completed this work. Congress could take the next logical step and require each nunding agency to be made publicly accessible by default upon publication of the findings or completion of the grant period. Changing the default from closed to open would alter cultural expectations. Instead of generating reasons to share data, researchers would need to provide justification for delay due to proprietary or privacy concerns. Public investment in science leads to solutions, cures and entirely unexpected advancements. Changing the default to open for Scientific Research data would transform science, dramatically increase the roi and accelerate progress. This is not a difficult proposition but it does require a mandate. This one action would dramatically increase benefit from science. Thank you members of the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today. Thank you. Our next wednesday is Terrence Keely a Senior Research fellow at kato institute. Prior to joining kato in 2014 served as president of the university of bucking ham. The only university in britain to be financially independent from the government and author of the economic laws of Scientific Research. He holds an md from university of london and an hpd from oxward. Thank you for being here and we look forward to your opening statement. Thank you very much for having invited me. Im very glad to be speaking after dr. Nosek. Because my five minutes is how we got to why his research became so important. In my testimony i provide the evidence and with Great Respect to senator peters, i have to say there is, im afraid simply no evidence that Economic Growth or technological growth that leads into Economic Growth is in any way benefitted by the federal funding of science. It is widely believed the government should fund science. Its based on the model of what science is i regret is unscientific and in my testimony i hope ive shown clearly that in this government and no other government needs it for economic reasons. Im not going to revisit it. Im going to accept thats what governments do. They fund science and what they do in consequence is they impose a particular model on science, which is called the linear model, which is actually has a history of 400 years. It was first prescribed by frances bacon 400 years ago in england and the model says, very much as senator peters suggested and dr. Nosic is you need a group of scientists doing Pure Research in universities and Similar Research institutions where theyre free to follow their own curiosity and where the science takes them and as a consequence of that knowledge leaks out to the rest of the world and is then turned into technological and other forms of sociaological advance. That is not how science happens in the free market. In the market scientifs are embedded very tightly with technologies, even with marketing. Theyre part of a commercial enterprise. The result, therefore, is that there are two ways of judging scientists. And theyre ultimately judged by their technology. How does a Scientist Research ultimately lead to technology that is a benefit immediately to the company, stock holders and to society at large that way . Of the university of arizona said last year in a very influential essay its technology that keeps science honest. But the government funding makes them answerable to fellow scientists and that leads directly to the two problems senator paul indicated. First, the problem with peer review is you end up with a group of people all agreeing with each other and whatever paradigm they wish to support. Nonetheless they have their own interests and unconsciously supporting paradigms that if tested against the technological market would never survive nearly as long as in the academic world. Such an example might be the 40year history of governments telling us not to eat fat which is based on a group of scientists telling another group of scientists they shouldnt and them agreeing with each other. It was of course wrong. The other problem is theyre not judged by what they achieve, theyre judged by the number of papers theyre published and what journals theyre published in. Scientists are not judged by what they achieve, theyre judged by what they write and the consequence of that is that scientists are encouraged to do the sort of things as produce papers that are not easily reproduced. And the reason is the bench mark for success is having the paper accepted, not making an important advance for humanity. So to conclude this country has engaged since 1950, when the nsf was created in an interesting experiment of the federal government funding science. Its had had no impact on fundamental rates of growth. Its created a niche where its proliferated and the question should be whether government should be funding science at all. Thank you. I have the privilege to introduce a fellow michiganer. Not only representing the state of michigan but a great university. Were blessed with a number of universities in our state. Shes the president for health and sciences and department of emergency medicine and a professor in Health Behavior and Health Education at the school of health. Dr. Cunningham has a very distinguished career focussed on Public Health interventions in Public Health settings such as the Emergency Department and have focussed on interventions using technology to reaching youth to prevent alcohol and e prescription opioid misuse. This is a matter of great interest to this committee. Her federally funded research over the last 18 years has focussed on improving the health of children, young adults and those seeking Emergency Health services. She started her career as an attending physician in flint, michigan. Thank you, dr. Cunningham, for your service and for testifying here today and representing us all very well. Thank you for that introduction. Good afternoon, chairman paul, Ranking Member peters and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to speak. I want to

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