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• Monday, August 20, 2007 08:23 PM

  NIH funding uncorrelated with scientific productivity

  NIH funding doubled over a short period of time (1999-2003) and I looked for the corresponding increase in scientific productivity. The simplest metric is the number of scientific publications. A natural control is the number of publications in other scientific fields where the budget did not double. The total number of publications cited in PUBMED shows a 7% annual increase between 1999 and 2005 (Table 1). The ISI database for in biology yielded an increase of 13%. In contrast, chemistry, without a budgeti doubling, increased 7%. Key words for different areas such as “DNA” and “Neuron” produced similar results. The annual increases reflect primarily increased coverage of journals by the databases.

  PUBMED "Biology", ISI "DNA", ISI "Neuron"

  7%, 13%, 0%,

  ISI "Physics", ISI "Chemistry", ISI "Arts and Humanities"

  3%, 7%, -2%,

  Table 1. Increase in the number of publications/year for different databases and search terms before (1996-1999) and after the budget doubling (1999-2005).

  As another control, I compared productivity in US biology labs to that of other counties(Table 2). Doubling the NIH budget had little effect. Only China showed a significant increase in scientific productivity over that period.

  ISI: kw=neuron, USA, Japan, Germany, China, UK

  1996-1999 2.9%, 7.6%, 12.3%, 42.7%, 1.2%,

  1999-2005 3.6% 1.2% -1.4% 38.9% 1.4%,

  ISI: kw=DNA

  1996-1999, 0.00%, -0.01%, 0.01%, 0.22%, 0.01%,

  1999-2005, 1.55%, 0.26%, 5.43%, 39.49%, 0.22%

  Table 2. The annual increase in publications from labs in five different countries for the indicated key words before (1996-1999) and after the budget doubling (1999-2005).

  Perhaps the articles are now twice as good as they were in 1999. but an anecdotal sampling of scientists suggests otherwise.

  The lack of correlation between NIH funding and scientific productivity is surprising. To lobby Congress to provide more money for the NIH, we need evidence that more money means more productivity. I encourage the NIH to supply this data.

  —Fred Sachs Read Fred Sachs's other letters
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