How Much Can You Cram In a 12-Page Limit?

The gold standard for funding of biomedical research in the US, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), changes it forms in 2010.

Formerly 25 page applications will be shortened to 12, supposedly to make grant preparation and review kinder and friendlier. Makes NIH seem all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it?

Yesterday, a blogger over at The Scientist raised concerns about the new format.

According to Robert Kalb, a University of Pennsylvania neurologist who is also the chair of the NIH's cellular and molecular biology of neurodegeneration study section, the changes may favor senior scientist:

"it frees the experienced investigator to not provide as much feasibility and preliminary data because they can just cite their previous publications."
This, Kalb told The Scientist, means that applicants with robust publication histories, proven track records of scientific accomplishment, and more experience writing tersely about their research may have the edge over their younger, less experienced counterparts.

First, senior investigators do not always write well. I have reviewed plenty of proposals from “giants in the field” that were unholy messes of grammatical and contextual errors. Often there would be something good in the application- these are successful investigators- but poor communication skills made it excruciating to sift out. The contention that senior investigators are more likely to have published work with their techniques and data they can reference has more validity; however, a junior investigator without a paper citing most of the techniques in their proposal  is very unlikely to get a fundable score anyway. Even for programs that do not require preliminary data, lack of a publication record often “reduced enthusiasm” for the proposal.

As The Scientist blog, posted by Bob Grant, also points out:

The NIH has made efforts to make the peer-review process easier on young scientists, recently announcing guidelines that more generously rank applications submitted by younger investigators

My interest in this topic is, of course, selfish; I hope to submit a proposal in January 2010. I spent the past 2 days at an NIH-sponsored conference, gathering background applicable to my proposal. The changes provoke anxiety; I’m a “big-picture'” person, and reviewers have never felt my proposals include enough detail about experimental minutiae. Where am I going to write that stuff now? I guess I will just learn to deal with it, same as everyone else in my world.

Photo courtesy of PhotoXpress.

This post got delayed a day because my internet connection at Washington National Airport refused to let it upload; then we barely got home because of blizzard conditions in Omaha.

It’s a Four Letter Word

I have received several emails and texts from my family, wishing me well:

Did you hear Omaha is getting up to 12 inches of snow tomorrow?

They have already cancelled school!

Think you’ll get home? We’re supposed to have blizzard conditions by the time you land!

S.N.O.W.

Four letters that may ground me tomorrow evening. Of course, my “well-wishers” keep “warning” me about this coming onslaught.

I wonder what they want me to do about it?

I can’t leave earlier. If I could, I would not have a direct flight. A layover in Chicago or Milwaukee is unlikely to improve my chances of landing in Omaha.

And it’s not like I can control the weather. If I could, Omaha would be perfect. Like 72 degrees from mid-January through May, then 85 and sunny for June-August. Autumn would bring 70 degree days with a touch of crispness in the evenings for football games. We would have 2 to 3 weeks of “winter” with just enough snow to dust the evergreens over Christmas and New Year days.

Think what the NCAA would pay me to guarantee a College World Series with no rain-outs!

Since I can’t make this happen, I will just have to go with the flow of snow tomorrow. Now quit telling me about it; I can get weather reports in DC!

Photo courtesy of PhotoXpress.

“All of the easy experiments have been done”*

I am attending a great meeting right now. About 110 participants are gathered in a nondescript conference room in the DC area. The morning session provided valuable background information for my next proposal. Multiple speakers reviewed the embryology and gene expression of genitourinary development. I am amazed at how many things must go right for the urinary tract to form correctly. Yet, most of the time, it works out!

My brain is really, really full right now.

Overlapping phenotype (clinical presentation) seems to be a huge problem within this field. Very few identified mutations consistently produce the same clinical picture, even within members of the same kindred. This is true for some mouse models also! Trying to find genes of interest with a variable phenotype  will be problematic. Throw in environmental influences, like intrauterine exposures or post-natal infections, and you have a real mess to sort out. Like most diseases, what we identify as a single diagnosis likely results from numerous different causes. A single causative factor or gene may produce multiple diagnoses as well.

For example, we know the genetic defect in branchio-oto-renal syndrome (BOR), an autosomal dominant mutation in the gene EYA1. I know of an affected family where one member was born with a single kidney (unilateral renal agenesis). The other kidney is normal, and the patient’s renal function remains normal at adulthood. This patient had no extrarenal manifestations of the syndrome. Another child was born with only one kidney, and it showed dysplasia (small with cysts and areas that appear abnormal on ultrasound). Eventually this child required a kidney transplant. Other children in the family failed to form kidneys at all and died in utero. These variable phenotypes all resulted from the exact same genetic mutation. What modifies this mutation to make it milder in some cases and more severe in others? If only one of the living children had been born, and there had been no family history, how would we have classified them for gene association studies?

Part of the meeting is devoted to discussing strategies to scan large populations for gene associations. Lucky for me that part occurs tomorrow; I will have a chance to empty a bit of my brain by then!

Congenital renal anomalies cause ~40% of end-stage kidney failure in children throughout the world. Clearly, we need a better understanding of this spectrum of disorders. Small, intense meetings such as this one are a great way to focus parties of interest on a common goal and make things happen.

I’m glad I’m here. And I hope I can help!

*The title of this post is the first of “Carmines Laws of Science.” Credit must go to Pamela Carmines, PhD, a colleague in Cellular and Integrative Physiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

STEM or Leaf or Something Else?

Over at Terra Sigillata, one of my favorite bloggers, Abel Pharmboy, asked if medicine and allied health fields should be considered STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers. The post and replies got me thinking (a dangerous occurrence), and my reply became too long for the comments. Thus, my own post.

Classifying professions is almost as difficult as classifying ethnicity; self-report is the gold standard.

In my own case, my advanced degree is an MD (even though mentors advised me to figure out a way to get a PhD). So 30% of my professional time is seeing patients; however, I play well with physiologists and study kidney disease in rats. So I would qualify as STEM, in that sense. Some would say that my work is not STEM in the government sense, because my funding source is NIH. I say science is science, whoever funds it. I know MD PIs who have had both NIH and NSF funding; where would they be classified?

If an allied health professional works in a clinical research center, is s/he STEM? The same skill set applies to those who work in purely caregiving settings- so why wouldn’t they be STEM? All have a certain background training in science; is that sufficient to qualify?

Finally, I wish to illustrate some parallels between clinical medicine and science. Healthcare is hypothesis driven, just as science is…

A scientist gets an idea and then

• Collects background data
• Develops a hypothesis
• Experiments
• Evaluates results of experiments and adjusts hypothesis accordingly

A healthcare provider sees a patient and then

• Collects background data (history & physical)
• Develops a differential diagnosis
• Tests the diagnosis, either through diagnostic tests or through response to treatment
• Evaluates the results of tests/treatment and adjusts diagnostic possibilities accordingly

There simply is not a firm boundary between healthcare and STEM. I will be interested to see what AbelPharmboy’s  poll shows [at this writing, the poll is in favor of healthcare=STEM, but the commentary is running the other direction]. Frankly I just don’t know that it matters. Except to those wishing to make a statistical point of some sort…

Photo courtesy of PhotoXpress.

What I’m Reading

I have not addressed this topic for a while. I have been reading, but books  best described as mental marshmallow fluff. Not something worth putting pen to paper (pixel to screen?) about, really.

Last week I received a review of this new tome, and I had to check it out. Those who know me understand that I am a bitch, a woman who has goals and tries to achieve them. I believe we should embrace this term, rather than giving it the power to derail us.

I just finished the first part of am-BITCH-ous. Thus far Debra Condren, a psychologist and career coach, provides numerous anecdotes of women who gave up their own dreams to support those of their significant others and family members. For those of us living with these pressures, this section is repetitive and, at first, seems rather unnecessary. However, given the radical argument that Dr. Condren makes, it ultimately proves its value. What is that argument?

As professional women, we are being hoodwinked into believing that life-work balance is our dream.

I can hear you out there now. “But that is what I want- a great job with time for other things like my significant other, kids, hobbies, whatever.” The anecdotes provided illustrate how often women get shunted from a successful career to something else that seems more noble because it puts the needs of others first. And not just their needs; their desires and dreams and comfort. These women are applauded for putting the needs of others first, but they may later find out that they volunteered for the shaft.

Living with others, no matter how much you love them or what their relationship, requires compromises and hard choices. I realize that, and my family has negotiated such issues in the past. Never did I feel that I had to give up all of my dreams for my husband or children. I maybe didn’t get 100% of what I wanted, but I never felt like I got skunked.

It’s that time of year when stations start trotting out Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. A few years back I heard this movie discussed by a psychiatrist  who really didn’t like its message. Yes, everyone loves George Bailey and bails him out at the end of the movie, but giving up one’s dreams and being so self-sacrificing is ultimately unhealthy. [I wish I could find the interview] Of course, this movie is FICTION. In real life, Mary Bailey would have been giving up her dreams of a career. Of course, all she wanted was George and a house full of kids…

Women who “make the correct choice” always seem to give up themselves for others. A few years of that would make one a desperate housewife…

I just now reached the meat of the book on how to avoid the trap. So far the exercises appear helpful, although I am guessing it will take a lot of work to get most women out of the martyr game. Especially since women are so applauded for successful martyrdom.

Timeless Advice from Calvin

Some days a comic strip ~20 years old just sums it all up: Substitute the words “paper, grant, or talk” for “book report.”

Substitute the words “subject you haven’t researched” for “book you haven’t read.”

OK, so I have started researching everything on my to do list, but none of it is ready to be organized into its final form. I know I will get everything done on time, so I have decided to stop worrying about it today. Just like Calvin.

I deserve a bit of happiness today.

Comic strip was “borrowed” from Gocomics.com; I hope this attribution is sufficient to keep their lawyers from calling. I mean, they offer free access to online comics, so what’s the diff if I post it here and give them credit, really?

Solstice Celebrations & Smiting Darkness

Since ancient times, every culture in the northern hemisphere has acknowledged the winter solstice. December 21 marks the shortest day of the year, a period of darkness that heralds the cold of winter. As we approach a period of cold and, in the past, dependence on stored foods and our ability to hunt those animals still out and about, what better show of faith could there be than a great big party? Eat up, because we know our deity will provide!

As someone whose mood falls with the shortening day, Solstice Holiday (Christmas) preparations provide a great distraction. Decking the halls with greenery and lights makes those long evenings more cheerful. I love knowing that these “Christian” traditions have their roots in ancient pagan traditions as well.

My family went a little insane with Christmas when I was growing up. I have restricted my home to a single really big tree. This year a 12-foot Frasier fir is decked with 800 lights. We almost have all of the ornaments on it (I collect them anywhere I travel, and I can’t resist any shiny piece of blown glass, especially if fashioned by Christopher Radko).

What better way to smite the darkness than putting up a few thousand lights and other shiny things?

Art courtesy of PhotoXpress.