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Congressional Briefings Focus on Science Education
The degree to which the United States can remain
competitive in the international community of scientists and engineers has
been a hot topic of conversation around Washington since the release in
late 2005 of the National Academies of Science (NAS) report, Rising Above
the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter
Future. This report formed the basis for President Bush’s American
Competitiveness Initiative announced in his 2006 State of the Union
address. Two recent congressional briefings covered topics related to the
quality of science education from pre-school level through to university
courses; several of the topics discussed at these briefings are of
interest to scientific psychologists.
 Read
the full article
Public Access Issue Heats Up
It was just over one year ago that NIH promulgated a
policy on public access of scientific articles that contained data from
NIH-funded grants. The current policy is that NIH requests but does not
require authors of scientific manuscripts to submit their manuscripts,
after acceptance to a peer-reviewed journal, to the PubMed Central
database where the articles will be indexed and made available for free.
The point of the NIH
policy was to have the research data from NIH-funded projects made
free to the public and available in one repository within 12 months of
their acceptance to be published in a scientific journal.
Read
the full article [back to top]
Science PPO Anticipates and Responds to Senator's
Threat to Behavioral Research at NSF
APA's Science Directorate and PPO staff have been alert to
possible threats to psychological research from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison
(R-TX), new Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on
Science and Space, since a speech she gave in Texas earlier this year in
which she decried the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) funding for
social and behavioral science. Executive Director for Science Steve
Breckler and PPO's Heather Kelly met with her staff immediately after the
text of the speech was publicized, to reinforce both the importance of
NSF's support for all sciences and the unique contributions of
psychological science to a range of national challenges.
On May 2, the situation intensified, when Sen.
Hutchison's Subcommittee held a hearing on "NSF's Fiscal Year 2007
budget request, research priorities, current plans and activities, and its
support for the American Competitiveness Initiative and related
activities." NSF Director Arden Bement, Association for the
Advancement of Science CEO Alan Leshner, and National Science Board
Chairman Warren Washington responded to Senators' questions. There clearly
were members of the Subcommittee opposed to NSF using any increase in its
budget for the support of social or behavioral science, and some even
questioned whether NSF should be supporting social and behavioral science
at all.
On May 16, PPO learned behind the scenes from
congressional staff that Sen. Hutchison planned to introduce an amendment
to S. 2802, a bill being drafted in the full Commerce Committee focusing
on increasing America's competitiveness and innovation (hot buzzwords used
to justify increasing science funding this year around the White House and
on Capitol Hill). The amendment would instruct NSF not only to assess the
degree to which grant proposals contribute to the enhancement of physical
science, technology, engineering and mathematics, but also to give
priority to them to the exclusion of other kinds of science.
On May 17, APA issued an action alert urging our members
to call key Senators to oppose Sen. Hutchison's amendment and support an
alternative amendment by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) eliminating Sen.
Hutchison's language). Within a day, we heard back from Hill staff that a
compromise amendment had been drafted clarifying that in giving priority
to some fields of science, no bias or restrictions could be placed on any
other fields of science that fall within the agency's mission. While not
drawing any direct or at least sole causation, we know that scientists
made an impact on the Hill and we thank you for joining us in the advocacy
effort. [back to top]
Washington Goes to SIOP
Science PPO's Heather Kelly led an invited CE workshop at
the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) conference
in Dallas on May 6. In "SIOP Goes to Washington: Advocating for I-O
Psychology," Heather gave participants a broad overview of how and
when I-O psychologists can weigh in on relevant issues within their own
organizations (including APA), local communities, and state and federal
government. This included interactive discussions about Science PPO's
engagement with APA divisions around policy issues, the federal
legislative process, strategies and concrete skills for I-O psychologists
to use in advocating for their science, and short- and long-term
opportunities for putting these advocacy skills into practice.
Continued Emphasis for User-Friendly Research at IES
On May 8-9, the Institute of Education Sciences' advisory
board, the National Board for Education Sciences, met to discuss the
current and future research priorities and other activities of the
institute. In order to learn how it can make its research more relevant to
practitioners, IES has invited several representatives from the education
community to talk with the Board about their own needs. At this meeting,
the Board heard from John Winn, Commissioner of the Florida Board of
Education and Valerie Woodruff, the Secretary of Education for the state
of Delaware. Mr. Winn explained that the state's primary role in education
is to set standards, monitor progress and allocate resources and what they
need are improved mechanisms for determining the effect of policy
decisions or new programs that have been implemented. IES Director Russ
Whitehurst and others on the Board indicated that to accurately evaluate
interventions, incremental or limited implementation would be necessary to
allow for control groups, which poses particular challenges for
researchers and administrators alike. Mr. Winn agreed that it would be a
challenge, as most education reforms are implemented across an entire
state and often include multiple new programs or initiatives, which make
it difficult to determine the effect of any given program.
Ms. Woodruff indicated that several areas of primary
importance were the decline in math and reading performance in middle and
high school and that administrators are looking for the best practices or
programs that are effective at all levels and with all students,
particularly children with a wide range of physical or learning
disabilities or children for whom English is a second language. Additional
research would also be helpful on the social needs of children during
young adolescence when students often decline in their academic progress.
One of the working groups of the Board is currently
reviewing the research portfolio within the National Center for Education
Research. Most of the grants were focused on reading, writing, cognition,
and teacher quality. The working group raised some concern that the
balance of the research portfolio did not meet with research priorities of
IES and will be looking for possible mechanisms to improve the balance
within the Center.
In June, IES will hold a meeting of all its grantees,
where they will hear from speakers regarding issues that are important
within the context of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). More
information about IES funding
[back to top]
NIMH Council Meeting Update
On May 12, The National Advisory Mental Health Council
met and heard first from Director Tom Insel, MD regarding the budget and
its impact on NIMH's research portfolio. Given the historic cut to the NIH
budget last year and the continued increase in the number of grants
submitted to NIMH, it has become even more difficult for investigators to
receive funding. Insel reiterated the current NIMH funding guidelines, in
which NIMH funds most grants in the top tenth percentile, and half the
grants between the 10th and 20th percentile, depending on three main
factors: relevance, traction, and innovation. Based on this system, Insel
indicated that seventy-nine percent of the grants in the top tenth
percentile and eighty-six percent of those grants in between the tenth and
twentieth percentile were in line with at least one NIMH priority.
Additionally, Susan Essock, Ph.D. provided an update from
the Working Group on Services and Clinical Epidemiology, which identified
six areas of emphasis, including: 1) partnerships in outreach; 2) quality;
3) fairness; 4) promoting recovery and resilience; 5) communication; and
6) ongoing evaluation. Some of the specific suggested topics for research
included new psychosocial interventions to augment medications for
schizophrenia, integrated mental health and substance abuse treatments,
cognitive behavior therapy across the lifespan, treatments for youth with
disruptive disorders or ADHD. The Working Group also suggested that NIMH
adopt more flexible funding mechanisms, create supplements for
intervention research that will also look at implementation, and add new
institute staff with the capacity to identify current policy issues, and
look for ways to partner with state mental health directors and other
private and public payers.
Read
APA's comments submitted to the Working Group in January
[PDF]
NIH tells Congress basic behavioral research is well
supported
On May 15, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni sent a report
[PDF 4 MB] to
Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) responding to
congressional concerns about NIH's support of basic behavioral and social
sciences research. NIH had been asked to provide a report detailing its
progress to the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the House and
Senate Appropriations Committees in Report No. 109-337, the conference
agreement that provided funding for NIH for Fiscal Year 2006.
Several members of Congress had expressed concern that the
National Institute of General Medical Sciences, whose mission is to fund
basic research at NIH, has traditionally funded almost no basic behavioral
or social sciences research. U.S. Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) and Patrick
Kennedy (D-MA) organized several colleagues to send letters to encourage
NIH to prevail on NIGMS to make additional investments in basic behavioral
research, and to encourage other institutes and centers to do more as
well.
The report seeks to mollify Congress that plenty is being
done to support basic behavioral and social science research. NIGMS has
increased its support with two program announcements and an
interdisciplinary training program. Many institutes and centers, including
the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Mental Health,
and National Cancer Institute, have active programs of basic research. The
report cites NIH estimates that of the $3 billion going to behavioral and
social sciences research, approximately $1 billion is considered to
constitute basic research.
So, is NIH doing enough? We in the Science Policy Office
think this is a good context for the maxim, "What you see depends on
where you look." Yes, NIH is supporting a lot of basic research, but
some types of basic behavioral research do not have stable homes at NIH.
There is a double standard when it comes to research that is not done in a
disease context or within a disease population. Basic research on group
behavior is not automatically assumed to be relevant to health, e.g. the
spread of influenza, whereas basic cell biology research is. Social
psychologists have seen some traditional funding sources dry up.
Scientists who do research on language origin and acquisition, especially
with bird models, may have a hard time getting support at the National
Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Scientists who
study basic risk and decision-making have had little support from NIH.
Finally, as NIH budget growth has slowed, and the success rates at most
institutes have fallen, it is no wonder that some researchers feel
discouraged. The NIH report implies that times are tough for lots of
sciences, not only for the behavioral and social sciences.
However, is this all just a budget issue? We think not.
Unlike NIH, we at APA are not ready to declare victory. The behavioral and
social sciences have come a long way at NIH, but as some institutes change
priorities, and some institutes who ought to change priorities don't,
there are still many areas in which advocacy is needed so that the playing
field is level for behavioral and social science. We don't believe NIH is
supporting enough basic behavioral research, or enough translational and
applied research, and will continue to make our case to sympathetic
members of Congress and the NIH leadership.
Please let us know your comments on the NIH report and its
support of basic behavioral and social science research by contacting Pat Kobor.
Read
the NIH report
[PDF 4 MB]
[back to top]
Good News about the Fiscal Year 2007 Budget
The House of Representatives passed its FY 2007 budget
resolution (H.Con.Res. 376) by a vote of 218 to 210. The budget included a
statement recognizing that $7.158 billion additional authority for health
and education spending is needed. Led by U.S. Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), a
deal was brokered with the House leadership to include the same level of
funding as was approved by the Senate in the Specter-Harkin amendment.
According to a summary of the agreement released by Rep.
Castle, over $6 billion was shifted from Defense and Foreign Operations
accounts into other areas of domestic discretionary spending; $4.1 billion
of which was shifted to the jurisdiction of the Labor-Health and Human
Services-Education Appropriations Subcommittee. Rep. Castle's statement
said, "Upon further negotiations Republican leadership has assured
moderates that there will be no less than $3.1 billion, above the $4.1
billion, for health research, education funding for disabled and
low-income students, Centers for Disease Control, after school care,
vocational education, and the National Institutes of Health and other
programs to benefit constituents."
The budget votes should mean that there will be healthier
increases for the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, and education programs. However, some observers
are not optimistic because the House will still need to find offsets for
$3.1 billion of the proposed budget increases. Normally the House and
Senate would attempt to reconcile the two versions of the budget, but
since time is running out in this legislative session, Budget Committee
members may not devote time to reconciling. Remember that the budget
guides appropriations, but unlike appropriations bills, the budget does
not have the force of law. There are still many decision points left
between now and final enactment of the 2007 spending bills. Watch for
additional information about the budget and appropriations.
Thanks to all the APA scientists who wrote to their
members of Congress encouraging support of Rep. Castle's efforts.
Grassroots involvement was key in persuading many Representatives to
support budget increases for key health and education programs while the
deficit remains high.
With NIH at a Crossroads Zerhouni Makes an Appearance
at NIDA
On May 17, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni gave a presentation
to the NIDA Advisory Council to try and allay some concerns and counter
some myths circulating in the extramural research community. The
presentation followed not long after a round of Congressional hearings
during which Dr. Zerhouni was asked to describe what health benefits had
accrued to the Nation by doubling the budget of the NIH. But those aren’t
the questions the research community is concerned about; scientists want
to know why their grant proposals aren’t faring as well as they have in
the past. The answer, according to Dr. Zerhouni, relates to several
factors that have all coalesced to create what he described as a Perfect
Storm. The overarching problem of course is the budget. But are individual
investigators feeling the pinch because NIH is over investing in
translational research, or spending too much on big projects at the
expense of RO1’s, or funneling too much money into the Roadmap
initiatives? No, no and no was Dr. Zerhouni’s reply, and he provided
data to show that the ratio of basic to applied research has remained
relatively constant over the last decade; that unsolicited RO1’s have
been funded at high and consistent rates during that same period; and that
Roadmap activities only amount to 0.8% of the NIH budget. So what is
really happening? Apparently it took some time for the research community
and research institutions to build the capacity to take advantage of the
doubling that ended in 2001 (Dr. Zerhouni quipped that there’s an
informal competition amongst medical schools comparing themselves by the
number of cranes they have on campus). So the real squeeze scientists are
feeling now is the result of the surge in grant submissions that occurred
in 2003, the failure of NIH budgets to keep up with inflation, and the
roughly 4 years it takes for resources to become available as one slate of
grants are terminated and a new set of awards begins. Dr. Zerhouni noted
that because of increased applications per applicant (up from 1.2 to 1.5)
the success rate is higher than it appears. Illustrating that point, Dr.
Zerhouni showed that the success rate in 2005 was 22.3% per application,
but 27.6 per applicant. So far. for 2006 the numbers are roughly 19.8% for
applications and 25% for applicants. Dr. Zerhouni sounded a positive note
for 2007, indicating that with the end of the 2003 surge, NIH should be
funding 3% more grants even with a flat budget. Further, Council member
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn noted that the snapshot approach may discourage newer
investigators because it fails to take into account the enhanced success
rates achieved as proposals are modified and improved across rounds of
review. Dr. Zerhouni agreed and discussed a number of mechanisms,
including the Pathway
to Independence Program, to help nurture the careers of new
investigators. Hopefully, SPIN readers are weathering this storm well and
can look to a brighter future with NIH.
View
Dr. Zerhouni’s presentation [PPT 4.5 MB]
More
information about the Pathway
to Independence Program
[back to top]
Two Fellows Chosen for APA/Department of Defense
Summer Research Program
The Science Directorate congratulates the two fellows
selected for our second annual APA Summer Research Fellowships in DoD
Counterintelligence. The positions are designated for one post-doctoral
scientist and one graduate student, both of whom will spend eight weeks
this summer working on research projects in the Behavioral Sciences
Directorate of the Department of Defense's Counterintelligence Field
Activity Office (CIFA). Douglas "Chris" Johnson, PhD fills the
postdoctoral slot. Dr. Johnson is a former U.S. Coast Guard Officer and
FBI Counterintelligence Analyst, and currently serves as an Associate
Research Scientist at Yale University. His research focuses on resilience
under stress in military populations and memory, facial recognition and
linguistic indicators of denial and deception. Whitney Wharton (MA, ABD),
a fourth year graduate student at George Washington University with a
research background in cognitive neuroscience, has been selected as the
graduate student research fellow. CIFA Psychologists are looking forward
to putting Chris and Whitney to work on a variety of issues, ranging from
cultural issues in the detection of deception to cyber behavior and
insider threat.
APA Scientist Richard Spoth to Present at
Congressional Briefing on Preventing Drug Abuse
On June 12, The Friends of NIDA coalition will hold a
briefing entitled "Preventing Drug Abuse: Putting Science to
Practice" [PDF], with APA member Richard Spoth as a featured speaker. Spoth,
Director of the Partnerships in Prevention Science Institute at Iowa State
University, will present empirical findings from his 15 years of NIDA-funded
experimental research on partnership-based implementation of a range of
interventions for youth and families, including long-term positive
outcomes, economic benefits, success of the evidence-based PROSPER
partnership model, and future directions in partnership network
development.
Friends of NIDA briefings are supported with contributions
from organization cosponsors. So far, next month's briefing has 11
cosponsors and counting. If your organization would like to cosponsor the
event, or to find out more information about the Friends of NIDA, contact
Sara Robinson.
Any questions?
If you have any questions regarding SPIN or specific
science policy issues, please feel free to contact any of APA’s Science
PPO staff.
Geoff
Mumford, Ph.D., Director of Science Policy
Pat
Kobor, Senior Science Policy Analyst
Heather
O'Beirne Kelly, Ph.D., Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
Karen
Studwell, J.D., Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
Sara
Robinson, Legislative Assistant
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