UPitt vs Penn State

luvthej
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 14:43:18 +0000

Pardon me for hijacking this but I feel something needs to be cleared up for the general public regarding the post from wgmcp101. The statistics of the percent of the budget for clinical TRIALS sounds right from what I recall reading. It’s small and a lot of it is funded by private sources (big Pharma). However, it is very important for the public to know the category of clinical trials is a very precisely defined area of clinical research. This is only a portion of the money spent on clinical (research conducted on patients or patient samples) studies. It may seem like I’m motivated by one-upsmanship, I’m not. Considering that a common argument against increasing NIH funding by some politicians is that money is wasted on research unrelated to human health, it is important to know the amount spent on clinical/human is higher than what you could conclude by the figures presented above.

Now for the response that’s useless to the rest of you, sorry just ignore
My point is using NIH dollars is not an indication of the amount or quality of UG research. I’ve been in both environments thank you and have been independent for more than 15 years. My opinions are primarily formed by reviewing NIH grants over the last 7-8 years, including many non-modular grants from universities and medical schools, and reinforced by the knowledge relayed to me by many colleagues still in a medical school environment. I’m sure you know what insights reviewing budgets within the grants would provide me. I see you know about percent effort. Think carefully if the expected salary contributions (effort) at medical schools versus universities supports or weakens your argument that medical school grants are larger due to the PI’s salary line. I’m where I am now because I prefer to use 25% of my grant money for my salary support versus 50-90% at a medical school. I’m well aware of the salary cap. My experience is that is rare for a professor at a University to approach the cap, while is commonplace for MDs to be at the cap.

Peace, I’m out.