Biology subjects

Lauer, M. S.

Publications and source records attributed to Lauer, M. S..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Absolute and Relative Declines in National Institutes of Health (NIH) Funded Basic Science Publications

An analysis of over 2.2 million NIH-funded research papers published between 1990 and 2024 reveals that there have been marked declines in the relative and absolute numbers of basic-science oriented publications. In 1990, nearly 60% of NIH-funded publications reported on basic science, with that proportion declining to 24% in 2024. The absolute number of basic science publications increased after the NIH budget doubling of 1998-2023, but at a slower rate than for human-focused publications. After the 2011-2013 budget shocks, the absolute number of basic science publications declined. These data support concerns about the long-term trajectory of NIHs support for basic science.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2022

National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant Inflation 1998 to 2021

We analyzed changes in total costs for National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Research Project Grants issued from 1998 to 2003. The NIH uses a data-driven price index - the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index (BRDPI) - to account for inflation based increases in grant costs. The BRDPI was higher than the general rate of inflation from 1998 until 2012; since then, the rate of inflation for NIH-funded research has been similar to the general rate of inflation. Despite increases in nominal costs, recent years have seen increases in the absolute numbers of RPG and R01 awards. Real (BRDPI-adjusted) average and median RPG costs increased during the NIH-doubling (1998 to 2003), but have remained relatively stable since. Of note, though, the degree of variation of RPG costs has changed over time, with more marked extremes observed on both higher and lower levels of cost. On both ends of the cost spectrum, the agency is funding a greater proportion of solicited projects, with nearly half of RPG money going towards solicited projects. After adjusting for potential confounders in a wholly non-parametric machine learning regression, we find no independent association of time with BRDPI-adjusted costs.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2021

Inequalities in the Distribution of National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant Funding

Previous reports have described worsening inequalities of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of principal investigators. We analyzed data through the end of Fiscal Year 2020, confirming worsening inequalities beginning at the time of the NIH budget doubling (1998-2003), but finding that trends have reversed over the past 3 years. We also find that career-stage trends have stabilized, with equivalent proportions of early-, mid-, and late-career investigators funded from 2017 to 2020. Women continue to constitute a greater proportion of funded principal investigators, though not at parity. Analyses of funding inequalities over time show that inequalities have consistently been greater within groups (i.e., within groups by career stage, gender, race, and degree) than between groups.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2020

National Institutes of Health Institute and Center Award Rates and Funding Disparities

A previous report found an association of topic choice with race-based funding disparities among R01 applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health ("NIH") between 2011-2015. Applications submitted by African American or Black ("AAB") Principal Investigators ("PIs") skewed toward a small number of topics that were less likely to be funded (or "awarded"). It was suggested that lower award rates may be related to biases of peer reviewers. However, the report did not account for differential funding ecologies among NIH Institutes and Centers ("ICs"). In a re-analysis, we find that 10% of 148 topics account for 50% of applications submitted by AAB PIs. These applications on "AAB Preferred" topics were funded at lower rates, but peer review outcomes were similar. The lower rate of funding was primarily due to their assignment to ICs with lower award rates. After accounting for IC-specific award rates, topic choice was not associated with funding.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2017

Marginal Returns And Levels Of Research Grant Support Among Scientists Supported By The National Institutes Of Health

The current era of worsening hypercompetition in biomedical research has drawn attention to the possibility of decreasing marginal returns from research funding. Recent work has described decreasing marginal returns as a function of annual dollars granted to individual scientists. However, different fields of research incur varying cost structures. Therefore, we developed a Grant Support Index (GSI) that focuses on grant activity code, as opposed to field of study or cost. In a cohort of over 71,000 unique scientists funded by NIH between 1996 and 2014 we analyzed the association of grant support (as measured by annual GSI) with 3 bibliometric outcomes, maximum Relative Citation Ratio (which arguably reflects a scientists most influential work), median Relative Citation Ratio, and annual weighted Relative Citation Ratio (which is more dependent on publication counts). We found that for all 3 measures marginal returns decline as annual GSI increases. Thus, we confirm prior findings of decreasing marginal returns with higher levels of research funding support.

scientific communication and education↗