FiSci

ou might wonder if study section leaders are the best scientists. Rest assured. They aren't. They are typically mid career, mediocre scientists. (This is not just a joke, data support this claim see www.drvinayprasad.com). They rarely have written extremely influential papers.

Many academic centers have teams of staff to help prepare them. NIH should eliminate these paper requirements and universities should lay off these staff. NIH can eliminate people who read this paperwork. We don’t need to pay someone to dig a hole, and pay someone else to fill it back in.

n Computer Power and Human Reason, Weizenbaum insists that “humans and computers are not species of the same genus,” since humans “face problems no machine could possibly be made to face.

Deep in the very heart of Australia, amid a vast, arid, featureless plain, now known as the Amadeus Basin, you will discover a great wonder of the world and a great mystery.

Given that the current system is onerous and likely flawed, you would imagine that NIH leadership has repeatedly tested whether the current method is superior than say a modified lottery, aka having an initial screen and then randomly giving out the money.

nstead, I would rather see us conduct studies, repeatedly, to learn of our processes are efficient. I would like to see us incentivize reproducibility. And then, if we are able to deliver, I would like to see the percent of funding going to science increase. I believe that in a working society, 10% of health care spending should be on medical resea... See more

Current NIH RO1 grants are 20 pages of science and 80 pages of fluff.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on March 20 that will facilitate the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, taking a step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge.

Although we process information, we do not do it the way that computers do.” Even to ask the question, he argues, of “whether a computer has captured the essence of human reason is a diversion, if not a trap, because the real question — do humans understand the essence of humans? — cannot be answered or resolved by technology.”