No doubt, science funding should be reformed. However, a block grant system—where NIH distributes $100 million grants to universities, which then allocate funds internally—risks simply transferring the administrative burden rather than eliminating it. Universities may establish their own internal grant application processes, requiring faculty to navigate a new bureaucratic layer with similarly detailed proposals and justifications. This isn't hypothetical: I've seen universities already operate internal award systems with formal application requirements. The result could be researchers spending a similar % of their time on applications, just directed to their provost's office rather than Bethesda.
More fundamentally, universities lack the appropriate incentives to make optimal funding decisions. Without skin in the game—the money arrives regardless of research outcomes—allocation decisions become vulnerable to internal politics, departmental turf battles, and favoritism toward established senior faculty. Feedback cycles would be long enough to dilute incentives.
That said, the block grant model could enable one valuable innovation: AI-powered retrospective evaluation of funding decisions. With access to complete institutional data, ML systems could analyze which past grants actually produced scientific impact, providing an impartial check on allocation quality over time. More broadly, we need better metrics of scientific value beyond journal impact factors and H-indices. Science should function more like open-source software development, where projects gain resources based on how many other researchers actually use and build upon them—a "fork and follow" model where usefulness, not just citations, determines support. This would reward work that genuinely advances the field rather than simply generating papers.
Thank you for doing this interview! Dr. Lauer has so much institutional knowledge and awareness of how these programs work. As an early-career researcher, I hope that university leaders across the nation reflect on his critiques. It should impact both how they promote training and how they support prospective faculty.
Thank you for the writeup/podcast- it is very interesting- and I didn't know about this historical connection to the Rockefeller foundation and how this set in place the small/individual grant model.
I have two questions:
First: Do you know what the variation between fields is for the 'first grant' idea/picture? (ie - I work in condensed matter physics- I don't know what the equivalent is for RO1s in my field, but as people are typically appointed for tenure younger- I imagine it must be lower?) There are many 'early career' grants available (from DOE, NSF Career, as well as from army research labs) - and many of these have cutoffs of eligibility, some that are 7 years post PhD. If the rise in age of appointment is due to lack of retirement- I would have thought this would have similar affects across fields (though perhaps there are hiring 'blooms' in trendy areas that make this harder to compare across fields)
Second: how much do you/others envision the X-Labs model (or the Block grant picture) to be analogous to the Max Planck Society (MPG) in Germany? Are there ideas/experiences from the MPG that can be brought back or can shape bigger Block grant pictures (I have been working at an Max Planck Institute for 5 years- to me there is significant overlap in the idea of dispensing money into a bigger unit that can then have ambitious goals on longer timescales.) What do you think (if you could institute or fund these more broadly) you would do differently than the German model?
I have a lot of respect for Lauer and his work at NIH. Living on the other side, I think his comments here oversimplify and somewhat misrepresent the current state of grants. While we can argue that there are too few grants for the number of applicants, some of it is the result of the early 2000s NIH budget doubling then the flat funding that followed and essentially "de-doubled" it, as inflation erased the increase. That said, the peer review system for NIH grants is the worst way to give out research funding if you eliminate all other ways of doing it. Peer review has improved over the years and I can honestly say that the reviews made my projects better. Maybe I'm just not a good scientist, but my projects are better as a result of peer review. You can still do innovative work and you are not at all "locked in" to exactly what your proposal says. You can adapt as you work on the project and learn more and get new ideas. Block grants could be a good component of an overall strategy, but I can't imagine just giving $100M to an institution and expecting it to be used wisely.
Also, F&A/overhead: my work has been at state institutions, and the institutions tend support research overall with more funding than they get out of F&A. Sure, you could just provide a grant to do only the work proposed, but it would be done in the dark, with no plumbing in the lab, no animal care facility, no staff to help order supplies, no one to fix broken equipment, and so on. F&A is part of doing the work. I get it that we likely have too many (nearly) 100% soft money positions, but that's not a fundamental problem.
This was a great interview and discussion, even if I disagree with some of the ideas.
I don't think it's the mandatory retirement change that increased average age of first independent grant. The trend started latest in ‘82, a decade before mandatory retirement was ended
My impression of intramural research is pretty negative.
I have ME/CFS and Long Covid. NIH took 7 years to spend $8 million (a lot in the ME/CFS world, the most underfunded disease compared to disease burden) on an underpowered and poorly designed study:
A review was announced in late 2024 in response to patients' criticism, but nothing's happened since.
A much bigger program, the NIH RECOVER program (headed by 3 of the Institutes) for Long Covid has spent almost $2 billion in a very ineffective way, mostly intramural.
Ask Lauer why he exonerated named extramural investigators referred to him for investigation of masssive institutional fraud, and what societal harm came of that act of corruption?
No doubt, science funding should be reformed. However, a block grant system—where NIH distributes $100 million grants to universities, which then allocate funds internally—risks simply transferring the administrative burden rather than eliminating it. Universities may establish their own internal grant application processes, requiring faculty to navigate a new bureaucratic layer with similarly detailed proposals and justifications. This isn't hypothetical: I've seen universities already operate internal award systems with formal application requirements. The result could be researchers spending a similar % of their time on applications, just directed to their provost's office rather than Bethesda.
More fundamentally, universities lack the appropriate incentives to make optimal funding decisions. Without skin in the game—the money arrives regardless of research outcomes—allocation decisions become vulnerable to internal politics, departmental turf battles, and favoritism toward established senior faculty. Feedback cycles would be long enough to dilute incentives.
That said, the block grant model could enable one valuable innovation: AI-powered retrospective evaluation of funding decisions. With access to complete institutional data, ML systems could analyze which past grants actually produced scientific impact, providing an impartial check on allocation quality over time. More broadly, we need better metrics of scientific value beyond journal impact factors and H-indices. Science should function more like open-source software development, where projects gain resources based on how many other researchers actually use and build upon them—a "fork and follow" model where usefulness, not just citations, determines support. This would reward work that genuinely advances the field rather than simply generating papers.
Fascinating interview Santi! Hopefully you and the folks at IFP can push the administration to fix some of the problems Mike outlined.
Great interview! I really enjoyed this one despite not having a science background. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for doing this interview! Dr. Lauer has so much institutional knowledge and awareness of how these programs work. As an early-career researcher, I hope that university leaders across the nation reflect on his critiques. It should impact both how they promote training and how they support prospective faculty.
Mike Lauer is exactly who I want to listen to at the moment. Great interview.
Great get for an interview and very substantive!
As someone who has also worked in that space… the overtime rules are infected with the same shitty management incentives as the private sector.
I would’ve LOVED to work THOUSANDS of hours of overtime to make advancements that benefited all of humanity!
But I am also a CAPITALIST, goddammit, and I DEMAND fair compensation for my extra labor.
Such was not on offer.
Thank you for the writeup/podcast- it is very interesting- and I didn't know about this historical connection to the Rockefeller foundation and how this set in place the small/individual grant model.
I have two questions:
First: Do you know what the variation between fields is for the 'first grant' idea/picture? (ie - I work in condensed matter physics- I don't know what the equivalent is for RO1s in my field, but as people are typically appointed for tenure younger- I imagine it must be lower?) There are many 'early career' grants available (from DOE, NSF Career, as well as from army research labs) - and many of these have cutoffs of eligibility, some that are 7 years post PhD. If the rise in age of appointment is due to lack of retirement- I would have thought this would have similar affects across fields (though perhaps there are hiring 'blooms' in trendy areas that make this harder to compare across fields)
Second: how much do you/others envision the X-Labs model (or the Block grant picture) to be analogous to the Max Planck Society (MPG) in Germany? Are there ideas/experiences from the MPG that can be brought back or can shape bigger Block grant pictures (I have been working at an Max Planck Institute for 5 years- to me there is significant overlap in the idea of dispensing money into a bigger unit that can then have ambitious goals on longer timescales.) What do you think (if you could institute or fund these more broadly) you would do differently than the German model?
I have a lot of respect for Lauer and his work at NIH. Living on the other side, I think his comments here oversimplify and somewhat misrepresent the current state of grants. While we can argue that there are too few grants for the number of applicants, some of it is the result of the early 2000s NIH budget doubling then the flat funding that followed and essentially "de-doubled" it, as inflation erased the increase. That said, the peer review system for NIH grants is the worst way to give out research funding if you eliminate all other ways of doing it. Peer review has improved over the years and I can honestly say that the reviews made my projects better. Maybe I'm just not a good scientist, but my projects are better as a result of peer review. You can still do innovative work and you are not at all "locked in" to exactly what your proposal says. You can adapt as you work on the project and learn more and get new ideas. Block grants could be a good component of an overall strategy, but I can't imagine just giving $100M to an institution and expecting it to be used wisely.
Also, F&A/overhead: my work has been at state institutions, and the institutions tend support research overall with more funding than they get out of F&A. Sure, you could just provide a grant to do only the work proposed, but it would be done in the dark, with no plumbing in the lab, no animal care facility, no staff to help order supplies, no one to fix broken equipment, and so on. F&A is part of doing the work. I get it that we likely have too many (nearly) 100% soft money positions, but that's not a fundamental problem.
This was a great interview and discussion, even if I disagree with some of the ideas.
I don't think it's the mandatory retirement change that increased average age of first independent grant. The trend started latest in ‘82, a decade before mandatory retirement was ended
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22695/
My impression of intramural research is pretty negative.
I have ME/CFS and Long Covid. NIH took 7 years to spend $8 million (a lot in the ME/CFS world, the most underfunded disease compared to disease burden) on an underpowered and poorly designed study:
https://thesicktimes.org/2024/09/27/five-reasons-why-the-nih-should-retract-the-effort-preference-claims-in-their-intramural-me-cfs-paper/
A review was announced in late 2024 in response to patients' criticism, but nothing's happened since.
A much bigger program, the NIH RECOVER program (headed by 3 of the Institutes) for Long Covid has spent almost $2 billion in a very ineffective way, mostly intramural.
Ask Lauer why he exonerated named extramural investigators referred to him for investigation of masssive institutional fraud, and what societal harm came of that act of corruption?