Posted on 06/28/2009 11:44:57 PM PDT by neverdem
Among the recent research grants awarded by the National Cancer Institute is one for a study asking whether people who are especially responsive to good-tasting food have the most difficulty staying on a diet. Another study will assess a Web-based program that encourages families to choose more healthful foods.
Many other grants involve biological research unlikely to break new ground. For example, one project asks whether a laboratory discovery involving colon cancer also applies to breast cancer. But even if it does apply, there is no treatment yet that exploits it.
The cancer institute has spent $105 billion since President Richard M. Nixon declared war on the disease in 1971. The American Cancer Society, the largest private financer of cancer research, has spent about $3.4 billion on research grants since 1946.
Yet the fight against cancer is going slower than most had hoped, with only small changes in the death rate in the almost 40 years since it began.
One major impediment, scientists agree, is the grant system itself. It has become a sort of jobs program, a way to keep research laboratories going year after year with the understanding that the focus will be on small projects unlikely to take significant steps toward curing cancer.
“These grants are not silly, but they are only likely to produce incremental progress,” said Dr. Robert C. Young, chancellor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and chairman of the Board of Scientific Advisors, an independent group that makes recommendations to the cancer institute.
The institute’s reviewers choose such projects because, with too little money to finance most proposals, they are timid about taking chances on ones that might not succeed. The problem, Dr. Young and others say, is that projects that could make a major difference in cancer prevention and treatment are...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ooooh. Maybe I can get a grant to study what happens if you feed a rat potato chips and Coca-Cola, versus another rat fed fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fish, lean beef, and vitamins.
Ooooh. Maybe I can get a grant to study what happens if you feed a rat potato chips and Coca-Cola, versus another rat fed fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fish, lean beef, and vitamins.
Incremental research is important and often can lead to breakthroughs, but they’re right, the system isn’t the best. But the high overhead costs that institutions charge is another reason. Good researchers have to bring in the cash for the administrations, rather than focus on doing good, worthy research. This isn’t just in cancer research, but across the board.
Guess who already performed this experiment according to his autobiography.
(answer below)
Mr. T.
Grant allocation and peer review have the same pernicious effects. The decision makers have vested interests in maintaining the status quo and will make their decisions based on how closely the proposals coincide with their beliefs. People are more than willing to assert that corporations kill unique ideas or products to protect their profits but totally refuse to see how academics are far more guilty than corporations are.
And some kid in my grade school. And about ten million other kids.
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