Podbit · Moonshots with Peter Diamandis
The NIH budget has ballooned to $45 billion yet drugs are more expensive than ever. Researchers spend 45% of their time on grant paperwork. The median intramural NIH scientist is 71. Kratsios argues the problem isn't money — it's that the scientific enterprise refuses to experiment on itself.
Where this was said
At 31:30 · chapter starts 31:15
The interview pivots to the substantive heart of the Golden Age Report: why, despite record budgets and better tools, is scientific productivity declining? Kratsios traces the problem to institutional inertia — a system designed decades ago that nobody wants to change, especially those who have succeeded within it. [1] — Michael Kratsios "The NIH budget has ballooned to $45 billion yet drugs are more expensive than ever. Researchers spend 45% of their time on grant paperwork.…" 31:30 The data is damning: the NIH budget has swelled to nearly $45 billion yet drugs are more expensive than ever. A National Academies study found researchers spend 45% of their time on grant administration. The median age of an intramural NIH scientist is 71 — while the average age of Nobel-winning scientific work is in a researcher's 20s. The scientific community, Kratsios observes wryly, is perhaps the community least interested in experimenting with new ways of doing science. The irony is not lost on either speaker.
Despite NIH's budget growing to nearly $45 billion, the cost of drugs is higher than ever, indicating declining returns on science spending.
A National Academies study found that researchers spend 45% of their time on administrative grant-related work rather than actual science.
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