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[Music]
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Welcome to episode 32 of the Language Neuroscience Podcast.
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I'm Stephen Wilson, a language and brain researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
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Well, as many of you know, this is a very challenging time for science, especially in the United States,
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so I wanted to do an episode about what's going on and what is likely to happen next.
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And for that, I've invited my friend Julius Fridriksson,
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who's professor of Communication Sciences at the University of South Carolina.
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More importantly, for this conversation, he is the Vice President for Research,
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which means that he oversees the whole research enterprise at the University of South Carolina.
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That puts him in a position to share his understanding of the current NIH situation.
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Before we get started, I want to take this opportunity to let you know that I have several fully
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funded PhD positions open in my lab, where students will be able to work on a project entitled:
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‘A Universal Aphasia Battery for Assessing Language Disorders in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People
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who speak traditional languages and Creoles.’
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If you or anyone you know might be interested in this, you can find out more on my website
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langneurosci.org under the join tab.
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Okay, let's get to it.
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Hi Julius, how's it going?
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Hi, Stephen.
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Well, how about you?
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Oh, pretty good.
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Yeah, I just got done teaching and yet mid-morning for me, and I know it's late at night for you,
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so thanks for taking the time to talk to me in your evening.
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Of course.
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I really enjoyed our last podcast, and I hope this one will be equally good.
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Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too.
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I, you know, we all talk about these NIH challenges, but I just kind of wanted to see if we could
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have a discussion about it and try and explain the situation for people that are not like deeply
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invested in the whole NIH world.
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I always try to be really upfront on the podcast about conflicts of interest,
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so, I should mention that I have a current NIH grant and another one that is pending and may or may
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not be funded.
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How about you?
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I presume that you are also funded by this institution.
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Yeah, so I'm in an exactly the same boat, so I have one grant under review, and I have a couple of
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grants that are funded currently by the NIH.
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Okay, so we're not pretending to be like uninterested observers here.
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We are involved in this system.
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Yes. So, to start, can you kind of talk about what role does NIH play in, on the global research scale?
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So as far as I can tell, the NIH is the largest funder of research in the world.
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So, I suspect that in the United States that if you combined the total research budget for all
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agencies excluding the NIH, that total budget for all those agencies combined would be less than the NIH.
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I'm not 100% sure, but I'm almost there.
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So, it's the total budget for the NIH is approaching 50 billion.
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The largest proportion of that goes to extra more funding.
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So, to fund people like you and I to do research and it funds a lot of different institutions
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and individuals in the United States.
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Yeah, and it doesn't just fund sort of last-stage clinical research either, right?
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It's a lot of basic science is done within NIH funding.
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Yeah, it's the whole gamut.
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It's everything from very basic science all the way to phase three and phase four clinical trials.
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Right, so you know, and without interest in this on this podcast and the neuroscience of language,
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you know, a lot of that work is funded by NIH, like a lot of the people that I've talked to,
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especially those from the US would have their labs funded by NIH.
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Can you kind of share for our listeners a little bit about how the NIH review process works?
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Like what happens when you submit a grant?
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What layers does it go through before you finally receive money in your bank account?
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So, the typical process is that you submit a grant.
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It's assigned to a study section.
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A study section might be a group of people.
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Somewhere between 20 and 40.
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It's a group of folks where three people are assigned as primary reviewers of your grant.
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And then they give an overall review of the grant,
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a score of the grant, and then about half of the grants that are assigned to the study section
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are then discussed in a meeting that typically takes somewhere between one or two days.
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Where sort of people talk about the pros and cons of your proposal, it gets like then a final score
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that is assigned by every one of the reviewers in the study section.
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It then goes to the institute that might be interested in funding it,
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and it gets ranked and percentiled and based there on either do or do not get funded.
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Uh-huh. And you want to mention briefly because it's going to come up, I'm sure, in our discussion,
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the role of the advisory council in that process?
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Yeah, so I would say that for grants that are, so they come out with a threshold based on the
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percentile that basically is, we're going to fund most grants that are below this percentile
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threshold. So, for grants that might be sort of in the gray zone either just under or just over
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or grants that, that institute might have special interest in, are then discussed in that council.
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That council is, typically a group of folks that include stakeholders that are interested
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in the research. So, it might be scientists but also people that might represent patient groups.
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Or, or, or advocacy groups and they come up with the final decision on what does or doesn't get funded.
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Yeah, so there's that, there's that sort of automatic pay line and like so for NIDCD,
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just kind of ballpark, not making any commitments to a specific year but like we might be talking about
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10%, right? So, like the top 10% of grants are going to get a going to go to council and unless there's
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something really odd, um, council's going to say, yep, let's fund those and then councils also going
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to look at the grants that maybe are like in the 12th percentile or even maybe the 15th and balancing
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that up against the agency priorities and say like, okay, maybe this one was ranked top 15%,
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but it's a topic that we really see a need to fund and so we're going to send it through. So, there is
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that kind of two stage, you got the stage section but then you've also got that council stage where
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they're going to apply like agency priorities. And I'm sure that, yeah, sorry. Just the only
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exception to that would be new investigators. So, our new investigators might get funded, let's say,
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at 25th percentile, which I think is true. We want to get people who are sort of trying to break into
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the field benefit of the doubt and try to get more of them funded so that they can be the stars of
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tomorrow. But typically, yes, the threshold might be, I don't know, I think typical maybe for
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NIDCD, might be like 13 to 15th percentile. I think you're overly optimistic, my friend, but we, it's,
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it's a little bit beside our current topic for today. So, and I'm sure that you've been a reviewer
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on many NIH study sections. How do you feel about that process? Like, do you think that the review
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Panels do a good job of picking the best grants to fund. Yeah, I, so I've, I've been a, a, a
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study, you know, a, a member of a study section for five years and I've also been an, an
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ad hoc member, many times. I think in general; people tend to get a fair share. There's always maybe
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something that you look back and thought, I wish this would have gone better. Both with my own reviews
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and also listening to discussions of others, but I would say on the aggregate, it's a fairly
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fair process. Yeah, that's been my impression too. And I actually sat on one just a couple of days
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ago, which is sort of surprising in this current era. But it being, being then, just seeing how kind of
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seriously everyone took it and how diligent everybody was, it sort of just reinforced what's always
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been my impression, which is that this is one of like the last bastions of like, you know, scientific
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integrity. Like I'm not saying that I always agree with the outcomes and the decisions and the
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views of the grants. Absolutely, don't always. But just this fact that you have to kind of like
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defend your position in front of the group of, of your peers. You know, you really don't get people
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saying any indefensible silly stuff. And if they do, they get shut down. Like they'll get like called on
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it and you know, you're not going to get, you know, you can't really just sort of make ad hominem attacks
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or, you know, poorly thought-out critiques. Like you're going to get called on that. Yeah, there's peer
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pressure. I mean, you're not going to show up and talk about highly biased stuff. You've got to know
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what you're talking about, and you've got to be able to support it, preferably with previous science.
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So, I overall, I think the process works pretty well. Yeah. Well, it did until recently anyway, right? (Laughter)
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So, let's get on to that. I'm just talking about the review process. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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So, let's talk about like what's been happening. So, I think it was January 21
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that we saw that first sign that there was going to be restrictions on NIH activities.
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So can you sort of talk about what's been happening in the last two months
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odd, in terms of those review processes? So just with the, so for me as vice president for
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research, the two big things that really have been on my agenda, um, several things. One is that
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they canceled a lot of study sections and council meetings. It is not unusual actually looking back
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for a new administration to put some kind of a pause when they come in. What is different now is
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that the pause was much longer, and they sort of did some things that I think were fairly unusual
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compared to how things have been done in the past. Um, I do think that, and you mentioned Stephen that
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you just served on a study section; I do think that most study sections are being scheduled now.
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There was a halt for probably about what are we getting towards the end of March? So almost for,
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yes, we're about a month, but I do, my sense is that the folks here at my university
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that served on study sections that they are actually being scheduled again, but the pause was
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certainly, very long. Um, so a lot of uncertainty. The other thing that happened is that they just put
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a stop to the awarding of new grants. Um, and also, they went into canceling grants. So canceling grants
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that they did not think that aligned with the new administration's agenda. So, we're talking about
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grants that focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and, sort of a gender related research of all
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kinds. Um, so those grants started getting canceled. Right. Which was a shocked to the system
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and not something that anybody's used to. Yeah, absolutely. It's, I mean, certainly at this scale,
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and I do want to talk more about that as well. Um, so yeah, like I think that I, um, you know, a few
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study sections are getting scheduled, but the one that I sat on had actually been scheduled prior to the,
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um, yep, the change of administration. And it turns out there's all these sort of archaic details
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that I had never been aware of before, um, despite living in this world for, you know, 15 years.
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Like so, for instance, every meeting study section and advisory council meeting needs to be published
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in this thing called the federal register. Right? And so, this is the mechanism by which the
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administration is using to, um, to gum up the process right now. Um, they're just, they've made a
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made a rule that like you can't put new thing, you can't put things in the federal register, right? So, the
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only reason that my, um, one that I sat on last week happened was because it had been scheduled
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like five months ago. Um, but now I have noticed I've been looking at the federal register to see what
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is getting scheduled. And there is a handful of, NIDCD, um, you know, NIDCD in particular,
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there are a handful of study sections that have been scheduled like literally like maybe three in
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just in the last week. So, it's not probably, it's probably only still small drips and drabs compared
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to like the backlog that, that would have been caused by this two month pause. Um, and then advisory,
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as far as advisory council go, I don't think there's any NIDCD advisory council meeting
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scheduled, although I have seen a few from some other institutes. So that's kind of encouraging that
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both of these types of meetings are getting scheduled again. But I think in pretty small numbers
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compared to what we're going to need to like get back on track. Oh, absolutely. I think there's
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going to be a slow ramp up time. Um, but for a while, there was nothing happening. So, it seems like
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activities are starting to happen again. I hope that's a good sign that at some point, hopefully in
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the very near future, we go, get back to, um, sort of business as usual, whatever that looks like. Yeah, let's
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and so, let's talk about like, you know, what is going to be the landscape of what can get funded? Um,
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you mentioned that they've, like flat out canceled grants on topics that, um, they
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don't want to fund anymore. Um, you mentioned DEI. Another one I noticed was vaccine hesitancy grants.
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So, people grants that are looking into like reasons why people might not get vaccines and what we can do
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to change their choices. Um, obviously that's coming from a certain, um, director of health and human
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services. Um, um, don't really agree with that one myself. Um, and how unusual do you think it is
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this like flat out canceling of grants that's happened like actual active grants? So, I don't have the
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full perspective of history. I don't know if this has ever happened before. So, it's certainly in my time
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as vice president of a research, it's completely unprecedented. I don't, I, I, I, I, yes, Stephen,
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whether we've ever gone through a phase like this before, um, certainly just in the media. I don't
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see any records of something like this. Yeah, I don't think that we have. I think that
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the Bush administration, in the second Bush administration, um, did cut some grants on embryonic stem cell
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research when they came into office. Um, but it would probably, I think it was just a small number of grants.
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Um, but I don't think anything like this has happened before. I mean, so grants do occasionally get
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canceled, right? You probably have been, have you ever encountered that in your, um, duties as VPR?
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I don't remember that until now. Yeah, probably. It's not a common thing, right? It's only like a
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dozen or two dozen a year, maybe it's, would be for things like fraud or like serious misconduct. It's
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like not a real normal thing for active grants to get canceled. Yeah. Certainly, atypical for sure.
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Okay. So, they're doing that. Um, and I mean, are we, how worried are we about, like, what's the scope
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of it going to be, do you think? So, for instance, I know that a lot of T32s, which is a, uh, sort of these
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large institutional grants that support a lot of PhD students in, in biomedical research, a lot of
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them kind of have DEI aspects to them where they've got sort of stated goals of, you know, recruiting
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diverse graduate students. Do you think that the, uh, T32s could be, I don't think any have been
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canceled yet, but do you think they could be in the crosshairs? Uh, do I think they could be? Yes.
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Absolutely. I mean, if you have DEI as a major component of your grant, I would be concerned.
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But it's, it's still so hard to tell, Stephen, because, um, we're talking about a fairly large
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number of grants that have some kind of a DEI involvement, at least. So, it's just hard to tell at
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this point how it's going to shake down. And is that the reason why many universities, are not
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taking on graduate students this year? Because they're uncertain about whether they, is it just,
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they, they, they are concerned about the training grants or is it more than that? You know what, I'm not
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totally sure. So, if I look at the budget for us at the University of South Carolina, um,
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grants that just flat out, if we just look through all the grants that we have,
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federal grants, grants that sort of explicitly are primarily focused on DEI, for example,
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it's a very small number. So even if all those grants get canceled, um, it just wouldn't have that
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much of an effect. I don't know for those universities what exactly the concern is, unless they're
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relying on the money that they get from indirect cost as a huge part of their, their budget for funding
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graduate students. For us, graduate students who are funded on grants are almost exclusively funded
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on direct cost. Yeah, that's been my experience. Yeah, I think it's unusual to, um, I think a lot of the
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the universities that went through this, the, the, it was not because of the, the cancellation of grants,
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it was rather the, the, the, this proposed 15% IDC rate that got universities concerned. Okay.
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Sorry, go on. No, I'm, I'm not really sure how their funding models would work, at least for most
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of the people that I know, it's very unusual for them to have a pot of money that goes to, to graduate
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students. Yeah, no, I don't think they wouldn't be like that most of the time, but like so you're,
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so I'm understanding that university of South Carolina is taking grad students this cycle, like normal
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or absolutely. Okay, because I've got a very high-quality student that I, um, mentored in the past as
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a master's student, like a really tough applicant now going for PhD programs. And about, about half
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of the places that she's applied to have, have basically said we're not taking any students this
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year, like, including her top choices. So, she's, you know, kind of hard up against it. Yeah, so here's
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what I would say about that. I suspect a lot of people are just worried about the uncertainty.
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So, they don't know exactly what's going to happen. Therefore, they're holding back.
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I've also seen things where universities are like halting new hires and, and taking on new graduate
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students. Universities that traditionally just don't get that much NIH funding and that,
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that one is a headscratcher. Yeah. I suppose universities were in financial trouble anyway.
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Just using this as an excuse. A lot of this, I think, just has to do with uncertainty of what we're
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dealing with right now. Okay. Yeah. I'm glad that you guys are pressing on with students.
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And, you know, definitely other institutions are too, um, but not all, definitely not all.
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So yeah, we've, you know, the indirect cost thing has kind of come up a few times. And so yeah,
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let's talk about that because that's really central. I mean, in some ways it worries me even more than the,
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the sort of slowdown or pause in review and funding decisions is this proposal to change the
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indirect cost rate. So could you explain to our listeners like how indirect costs work,
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what they spent on and what has been proposed? Yeah, wow. There's a lot that goes into this. So,
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I think IDC indirect cost rates have been around maybe since the 50s. And the reason why they came
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about was because universities that were sort of rising research universities realized that
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the cost of doing research was much greater than what the actual direct cost was that they're,
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that they were getting. So, if you take on a large project, now you have to hire folks, you have to,
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you know, keep the light and heat on for the labs. You might have to, uh, tax people's time and effort
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for procurement. You might need to pay for people that do research compliance. It's just a huge
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mechanism. And so, universities, once they realized that they were really losing money on this,
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just refused to take grants. And so that's how this idea of IDC or indirect cost came about.
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They actually started at Harvard, uh, with a grant on polio as far as I can tell, funded by the
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March of Dimes. And so that's the earliest incidents that I know of IDC. But it's just become
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sort of the, the routine business that universities negotiate with the federal government,
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what their IDC rate should be. And that's based on many different factors, including, you know,
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what's the, what's the size of facilities? How many people are supporting research?
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It's a long-drawn-out process. It's not a number that you pick out of a, out of a hat, so to speak.
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But it's what we call the negotiated rate, for the University of South Carolina, it's 49 cents on the dollar.
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So going from 49 cents to 15 cents, uh, it would, it would lose a lot of money.
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Yeah. It would be a huge difference. Yeah, it would be a huge difference. So, like most public,
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like most large universities in the United States, we lose money on, on research. We're not making
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money. So, uh, we do it because it's our mission. It's our tradition. Uh, we believe that it's not
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enough for us to teach students. We generate the knowledge that we're disseminating. And so,
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it's a part of what universities do. So therefore, we take the losses, but going to 15%
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would be devastating. I mean, that's just the truth. Yeah. I mean, these are just simply costs
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that exist and are incurred and need to be paid. And so, you know, 49% is fairly typical for,
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you know, an R1 university, but it's even higher for medical centers, right? So, at Vanderbilt,
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I think the, the indirect cost rate is in the 70s. And even that being the case, I mean, I think that
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as a, a more junior researcher, you'd look at your grant and you're like, "Whoa, are they getting all
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this money?" Like, I, you know, I wrote that grant. That should, I should get the money. What,
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are they doing with 70 cents on the dollar? But I actually, you know, I know from being there
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and talking to people that actually, like Vanderbilt also makes a loss on research, right? So even with
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that 70, I think it's 75%, even with that, they are still losing money just because the actual
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infrastructure costs of doing research are more than that. And it's like you said, like, you know,
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it's all kinds of things. It's, you know, keeping the lights on, it's having data, I mean, having,
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you know, data and storage and, you know, security protections and IRBs and radiation safety kind of
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boards and, you know, all that stuff, all that regulatory stuff that needs to happen, all the people
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that run the budgets for the grants. I mean, there's just so many costs associated with doing research
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that you can't really pin down. And then you're not allowed to charge them to your grant, right? You
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couldn't put in your grant, like a line item for light bulbs. There's just a list of things that
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can't be charged that way. Right. So, you can imagine how much power a typical 3 tesla
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MRI scanner pulls in a year. The electrical bill for that is humongous. And it certainly isn't
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covered in whatever you're paying for scanning. It's just stuff like this. Yeah. Just huge, big costs that
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can't be tied to a single project. And that's why they negotiated by each institution with the
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government. So, yeah. So, then they made this announcement on a Friday afternoon that it was going to
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Was going to be reduced to 15%. What did you think when you heard that? I was surprised to say the least. I was
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worried because immediately I started thinking, well, what does this mean is the university going
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to get out of the business of doing research? And of course, I hope that this would not
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last and it didn't. And who knows what's going to happen with the future. But
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there's so much misconception about the IDC rate. And I think that once everybody gets on the same
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page for what is actually paying for, I am hopeful that we will stick with a negotiated rate. Because
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it wasn't just something that came out, out of nowhere. There's such a long history. And as far as I
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can tell, this is not something that is being abused by anybody. I mean, this is the universities
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are getting less than what the true cost of doing research is. Yeah. And when you say it was,
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you know, you hope that it wouldn't last. I mean, obviously a judge came and said it’s illegal
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and paused the decision. But I mean, what's going to happen when they award the next? I'm not sure if
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they have awarded any grants since then. Do you know if they have, are they currently, is NIH
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awarding any grants right now? Oh, yeah. And what indirect costs rate are they coming with?
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We've got a negotiated rate. So, pending that with that judge's decision in place,
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the status quo is continuing to be implemented, huh? Yes. Because now it's impingent on the federal
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government to actually appeal the judge's decision. And so, this could be a legal battle that goes on
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for months or even longer. It's hard to say, Stephen. But right now, we are already starting to get
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NIH grants funded and we're getting the negotiated rate 49%. That's good news. I wasn't sure
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whether grants were being awarded right now. I encountered that. Hopefully I'll encounter it in
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the form of my own grant at some point before too long. That's encouraging that they are,
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you know, going with the negotiated rate because I understand it to be like the law, right? I mean,
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like there is definitely, it's in the, I think it's in the 2017, like, appropriations bill that
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it can't be changed unless Congress were to change it, which I don't think they would.
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So, do you think that the Trump administration will have any luck with their appeals? Or do you think,
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I mean, if it even if it goes all the way to the Supreme Court, I mean, do you think we're going to
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get like decisions that support the way things are and as written? It's hard to tell. I mean, if I had
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to put money on it, I don't think we'll go to 15%. I just don't see it. What would, I mean, just
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play that through. What would happen if they, if that was the end result? I mean, most American
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Universities, I think would just stop doing research and then what do you do? You, you, you stopped one of
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the major economic drivers in the United States, which is the universities that drive innovation
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and research. I, it's hard for me to think about that future. It's so un-American. Yeah, I know, and,
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I mean, this is what kind of made me like, you know, kind of, I have to say like I kind of thought
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there was enough of a critical mass of, and a bipartisan support for America's research
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infrastructure like in the past, there always has been right and, and you know, I was reading through the
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the transcript of the confirmation hearings with Jay Bhattacharya for NIH director, and you know,
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this Republican Senate is, um. Stephen, think about it. There are
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universities that are research powerhouses in some of the major states. It doesn't matter whether
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they're red or blue. And they stand to lose a lot. I mean, think about, think about Texas, for example,
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University of Texas, Texas A&M. I mean, it's, these are some of the most prolific research powerhouses
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in the world. Yeah, no, I don't, I don't think that many Republican senators want this to happen
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in their states. No, I mean, think about UAB. It's, it's, it's one of the best academic medical centers
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in the, in the world. I mean, it's an outstanding institution. So, what are you going to do with that?
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Yeah. So, you just think it's just bluster and it's going to amount to nothing?
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I don't know. Oh, I just, it's for me, if this does, if this model doesn't continue,
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um, there's so much stuff that would change. I, it's just that United States that I, I think,
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would be unrecognizable for a lot of us. Yeah, there's really no way to imagine it,
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um, it's impossible to imagine how research would continue.
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If this went through. Yeah. Um, and yeah, and so I guess we hope that it's just a, a decision that was
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made without really serious consideration and, and upon reflection, it's going to not go through.
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That, yeah, I can't, Jay Bhattacharya is a very well-educated man. He understands
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what is at stake here. I can't see him pushing this. I remember when the, the director
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came out to go to 15% flat rate, they took as an example that many foundations did a five,
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10 to 15% IDC rate. Well, we can do that because of the federal rate. Otherwise, we would never be
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able to take these, uh, grants from foundations if we didn't have the federal rate that is considerably
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higher, but the universities are not using federal funds to subsidize the foundations directly,
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right? I mean, that would be a problem too. Yeah. Oh, no, but still a lot, the reason why we can
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afford those is because we still, they're such a tiny proportion of what we do is foundation grants.
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Yeah. So the university is taking a loss on these foundation grants. I mean, the university is
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having to kick in the indirects, basically, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So that comes from state funds,
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it comes from tuition. Yeah. So, you think Bhattacharya is, um, well, I mean, I, I like what he says, and I,
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and I just wonder whether, whether he is actually going to do it because, you know, you look at his past
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record. I mean, he's a serious researcher. He's, he's had an NIH funding himself.
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Yeah. He's, you know, he's saying all the right things, like in terms of what he wants to do.
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Do we, do we believe that he is going to be a good leader for the NIH or is he going to be subject
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to political pressure from above to make decisions that in his heart of hearts, he knows are wrong.
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No, man, I, I've no idea how to answer that, but he's the thing, Stephen, the NIH is a huge institution.
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I think it's also wrong for us to assume that everything was perfect with the NIH and that there was no
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reason to go back and look at what does the funding model look like? Are we always funding the
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best research? I don't know, but is it reasonable for the taxpayers of this country that at every once
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in a blue moon, there's some kind of a shake up? Maybe, I don't know what that would look like, but at
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some time it's probably a healthy to take stock and look at, are we doing things as well as we possibly
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could? Yeah, and maybe a moment. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be whether we like it or not. And I think
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it's kind of ironic from my point of view, because like my last, last podcast episode was, was, with
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Masud Husain, about like the explosive growth of administrative bloat and how it's strangling
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science, right? So, it's not like I'm coming from a position of like everything's awesome. And so, it's
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a little bit crazy that the federal government keeps adding all kinds of administrative stuff on us,
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especially with compliance. That stuff is getting out of control. And guess what? It costs money.
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Yeah, I mean, a lot of those 50% 75% in directs are going to pay very expensive lawyer people to
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deal with all the regulations that come with having NIH grants, right? Absolutely. I mean, they could make
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those costs go away if they would stop putting those requirements on us. Yep. I agree 100%.
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What about this talk that's been floated about reducing the number of agencies, right? So, the NIH
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has about 30 odd agencies. And I've heard talk of, you know, streamlining it down to 15 or something
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like that. I don't know where, I don't know where NIDCD would stand in such a, in such a move. But
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what do you think when you hear about that kind of talk? So, I saw a proposal. This was actually under
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the Biden Administration. I think it was, I can't remember who proposed it, but the NIDCD would be
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combined maybe with a couple of other institutes under a single institute. I guess they're looking to
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cut cost, administrative costs. I don't know what the sweet spot is for the number of institutes.
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Whether it's more or less, but just like I said earlier, it's, I think it's okay to look at it.
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Yeah, I was like, I was kind of like seeing both sides of it. I mean, I could see like
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it being more efficient to have less because there's definitely like a lot of administration involved
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in each of those 30 institutes, which might be replicated. But on the other hand, I like the idea
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of local decision making, right? Like we want to have like, deafness and communication disorders,
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like, you know, we want people that, where that's their passion and that's their expertise to be
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making the decisions about funding that kind of research rather than, you know, kind of outsourcing
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it to some larger entity that might not understand the details. Yeah. I worry about some of the institutes
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that they're so large that everything is so impersonal. I like the NIDCD because I feel like we can
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have personal relationships with our program officers. I think that that is actually healthy and
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helpful for research. I would hate for the NIDCD to go away. It has a special place in my heart.
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But, you know, we'll see. Yeah. I mean, even if it gets, like in my, at the University of Queensland,
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we've just combined health and behavioral sciences with medicine to make like a, a giant faculty,
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right? Like a giant college equivalent. And it's like, yeah, I mean, I get it at every like,
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they didn't really actually change anything, you know? Like all of the same, the same people
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are still here. They're all doing the same things, but they've just kind of put a number
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all over the top. And I wonder if that's what will happen if you end up combining agencies,
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like at least initially, you'll just kind of glomming these things together and any kind of
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like streamlining might actually be a longer-term process. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, you're kind of pretty
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sanguine about the situation. I used to generally feel like things are more likely than not going
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to get back on track. And is that how you're feeling about it? Yeah. I, the NIH is a powerhouse that I
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don't think that you would get broad support to do anything drastic to change its mission. And it's,
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it's overall size. I can't see it. I mean, think about all the major health issues that we're still
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grappling with. We got to figure out how do we cure Alzheimer’s Disease. We still got to
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figure out, you know, curing Cancer. I mean, all of these things are still things that all of us
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worry about. Nobody wants to get these things. We all want to figure out how to cure them. So, who's
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going to do that? Well, if you look at the NIH, almost every drug that is on the market in the United
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States and in many countries around the world, the, the NIH has its footprint on that drug. I mean,
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the education of a lot of the medical students and, and how science is students in the United
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States, the NIH in some ways aids that effort as well. It's just so far reaching it. Do we really want
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to, do we really want to walk that back? I don't see it. Yeah, I mean, I want to agree with you, obviously.
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We always had a bipartisan consensus for this in the past. I'd like to think it will assert
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itself again. Yeah, and I'm not so sure that we still, I mean, I think we still do. I mean,
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maybe it's not exactly like the, what we're used to, but I think that everybody can agree that
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getting cancer is a bad thing. And, and one of the things that the NIH should be focused on is,
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is figuring out how, how we cure it. Mm-hmm. So, you'd see the say that they're, um,
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these actions are sort of a clumsy attempt at reform, um, without, um, representing a,
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a fundamental disagreement in the idea that we should be funding medical research at scale.
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I hope so. The other thing is, you know, when there's uncertainty, um, I try, I tend to be fairly even
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keeled. I mean, it's so easy to go to a very dark place and stay there and always think about the
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worst case scenario. But if you think about just the overall implications for this country and
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many others at the NIH were just to go away, I just don't see it happening. I, it would be
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so many things would have to happen for that to be come to fruition. Yeah, for most of us, are
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probably going to come through this totally fine. Um, there will be some people that will not,
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right? I mean, like, there are some people that have actually lost their grants or there are,
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you know, there are students that have lost their opportunities. Um, and they're not going to get
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those back. Um, so there, there are going to be people that, um, really are negatively affected by
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this in a way that, you know, is, you know, not just theoretical. Yeah. So, when I talk about the
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total number of grants at my university and the number of grants that have been terminated,
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it's a tiny number. What I always try to remind everybody is that even though it's a tiny number
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for those individuals whose grants got terminated is devastating. And so, what we do at my university is
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that we meet with you, uh, face to face. We talk about what can the university do to help you?
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Are there some things that we can help you with the next grant that you want to put in? It is not
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something that we take lightly because of course, you and I can easily imagine what if,
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tomorrow we heard that our grants were no longer. We have people who are, we're paying postdocs,
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we're paying graduate students, all of a sudden, what are they going to do? I mean, for those
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individuals, it's a terrible situation. And, and though that's the one reason when I said earlier
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that it's easy to go to a dark place, those are the folks when we have those meetings, it's
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easy to feel depressed and feel like, you know, what are we doing? Because I, my heart bleeds for those
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people. And at, at USC, it, it sounds like you're doing your best to buffer those individuals that
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have been directly affected by the situation. The university can kind of stay, come in and
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staunch the bleeding and, and try and find a way back to, you know, kind of a, a, a future.
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Yeah, we can help with people with certainly with their next grant applications. The number one
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thing is that we, that we definitely don't want to see is for students to lose their funding.
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They're just casualties in the middle of this. And that is absolutely not acceptable.
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So is the university picking up, like, so say somebody’s , R1 gets cancelled and they had a grad
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student funded by it, is the university going to find a way to like, find an alternative source of
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funding for the student? Yeah, on a, yeah, on a different project, absolutely. And that's kind of
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what I wonder if a lot of these are the, these universities that have put a halt on new students,
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this year. I wonder if that's what they're kind of doing. They're just wondering, like, how many
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students are going to lose funding? We need to, you know, we need to have a buffer here because we
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might be centrally supporting students that were previously grant supported. Yeah, so we're not so much
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doing it from the central. We're very much like, let's say that, you know, your, your department has
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four R01 grants, one gets cancelled, well, can those students from that one cancelled grant be
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absorbed in the other three? So, is there room for those to get hired? I see. Well, I bet this
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has kept you really busy for the last couple of months, huh? Yeah, I got to say, I do not remember a
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period like the last two months in my, in my career. The hardest thing is just the uncertainty.
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It's, for me, you know, I've always been able to deal with uncertainty fairly well, but
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when you're dealing with other people's work being affected, that's much harder. I can adapt my own lab
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and I sort of feel like we've gone through so many different things in the time that I've been
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at the University of South Carolina. I can sort of figure out what to do next, but when you're dealing with
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a lot of different faculty, with a lot of different types of grants, there's just a lot of
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degrees of freedom and those are not easily dealt with sometimes. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you're
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in that position of VPR where you're, you know, able to support your colleagues. I think that,
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I trust that you're, you know, doing everything you can for them. Absolutely. We're trying, and, you know,
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as we move forward, that I think the number one thing for us is to make sure that everybody's
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informed about what's happening because I, I can see that when I talk to our faculty, if they don't
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know what's happening, it's so easy to just fill in the blanks. And like sometimes everyone's
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in a while when you go to that sort of dark place, like I said, it's easy to stay there if you don't see
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a way forward. Yeah. All right. Well, I will let you get back to your family and go to bed or whatever
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you do at this time of night. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and share your
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experience with our listeners. You know, it's really, you know, great to get your perspective as a,
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you know, vice president for research, you know, you sing this play out across that wider scale.
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So, I really appreciate you sharing your time and your thoughts with us. Absolutely. I enjoyed
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the chat, Stephen. All right. Take care. Talk to you soon. Bye, bye. Bye. Okay. Well, that's it for
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episode 32. Thank you very much, Julius, for joining me on the podcast and sharing your perspectives.
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If anyone wants to follow up on anything, please feel free to drop me a line at smwilsonAU@gmail.com.
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Thank you also to Marcia Petyt for editing the transcript of this episode. I hope everyone is
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doing okay. Take care and see you next time.