PNAS: Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws

The long-held but erroneous assumption of never-ending rapid growth in biomedical science has created an unsustainable hypercompetitive system that is discouraging even the most outstanding prospective students from entering our profession – and making it difficult for seasoned investigators to produce their best work. This is a recipe for long-term decline, and the problems cannot be solved with simplistic approaches. Instead, it is time to confront the dangers at hand and rethink some fundamental features of the US biomedical research ecosystem.

Bruce Albertsa, Marc. W. Kirschnerb, Shirley Tilghmanc,1, and Harold Varmusd
aDepartment of Biophysics and Biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158; bDepartment of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115; cDepartment of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540; and dNational Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Apr 14.

Pubmed: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24733905
Full article: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1404402111