What's going on with the NIH? with Julius Fridriksson

In the episode, I talk with Julius Fridriksson, Professor of Communication Sciences and Vice President for Research at the University of South Carolina, about what's going on with the NIH since the recent change of administration.

Transcript

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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.