It is widely accepted that decades of scientific research funded by the State have helped us to develop new vaccines, to reduce deaths due to cancer and to extend our expectations of life. On the neuroscience front, we have Translated from brain activity in speech as well as movement, Stimulated deep parts of the brain to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and identified the Genetic causes of certain types of epilepsy—Mreely thanks to the financing of the United States government.
The new Trump administration’s financing directives have the entire scientific company in the United States under a meticulous examination. Several programs funded by the federal government are on the Cup block, climate change studies in all that presents the term “gender” in its name or in description. There is a large uncertainty about the stability of overall financing of two of the main scientific financing agencies in the United States: the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). More recently, the Cap Could cost billions of dollars to establishments and seriously hinder the American research ecosystem.
Scientists are well aware of how these changes will affect our ability to do research in the United States, but the public as a whole, and sometimes even stemming undergraduate students and higher students at the start of their career, does not Do not understand how scientific research activities really work.
It is difficult to find data that measures this gap directly, but as far as I know by speaking with colleagues, very few undergraduates include a discussion on the functioning of scientific financing. It appears more regularly in higher education programs, for example, in programs that require their doctorate. Students to generate a subsidy as a criterion of progression. But even on R1 research campuses, an designation for universities with great research activity, where federal funding is critical (at the University of California, more than half of our research funding is Federal sources), this information rarely enters, if never, in our classrooms.
As teachers, we may think that this information does not enter our lessons, or we already have difficulty overloading content. But I think there is a deeper reason at stake: I suspect that we could avoid talking about the infrastructure of science because we are afraid to encroach on political and therefore personal issues. I think it must change, and I am not the only teacher who thinks it.
First cycle teaching is a major way so that we can help to form a scientific generation of citizens who will bring these values when they vote on our government leaders. The United States graduate of almost half a million students With undergraduate diplomas in stem each year. In this column “how to teach this article”, rather than discussing an eminent neuroscience article, I will explain how to teach these students the financing of science.
How to approach this lesson
As always With teaching, the first major consideration should be who are your students and what they might already believe. The subject of scientific financing is, in this quarter of 21st century, a political question. Students can have vast opinions on science financing according to their experience or their placement on the political spectrum. They may also have no strong feeling about it. If you are curious, plan to give students a quick investigation before holding this discussion in class, possibly using questions from the investigation by Pew Research Center 2023 on public confidence in science as a starting point.
Understand who your students could change the way you motivate this lesson and the tone with which you are approaching. You can choose to discuss political differences in opinions towards science or not; Be that as it may, keep in mind that the name of political parties does not demonstrate the biases itself. The declaration of the results of the PEW survey, for example, can be as the declaration of the results of any other scientific study that you could talk about to students.
What to say to your students
Whatever your students, you can ask them what they know about federal and private financing for science, give them the facts on the expenses of NIH and NSF, and tell them about the visible impacts of these funded research studies by the federal government. You will want to design learning objectives that are suitable for the level and history of your students and draw from your own experience and expertise.
As you can see on the Slides that I use In my own course, the learning objectives on which I landed are:
- Describe the landscape of biomedical funding in the United States and in our local community.
- Identify examples of research funded by the federal government with a clear societal impact.
- Describe the current steps in examining subsidies and in the peer examination process for articles.
Like my wife and I are argued in a Recent Podcast episodeThe economic and societal benefit of the NIH is enormous. You could tell your students, for example, that the financing of NIH has contributed to research leads to each approved medication By the US Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2016. In addition to the examples listed above, you could highlight the progress we have made to understand the brain in the past 50 years, both in fundamental science and translational, By perhaps attracting a clear tie between the two. You can attract examples directly relevant to your class content and perhaps even your own research interests. I am interested in cell types, for example. Research funded by the federal government has helped us map the complexity of cell types in the brain, which helps us understand why the drugs that influence neurotransmitter systems can affect specific cell subtypes differently in different people.
I think it is particularly significant to consider the impact of federal financing in your own local or institutional context, for example by asking students to explore United for Medical ResearchNih in your condition tool or by integrating information on the financing of your university. As always, the more personal and local it is, the higher the impact on students.
In the slide linked above, you will see a graph showing the ventilation of funding sources of 52 laboratories mainly in neuroscience in R1 institutions. This also gives you the opportunity to discuss the foundations that support science and how laboratories start with start -up funds.
You might think: “But all of this is boring, and the students don’t care”, but it was not true in my experience. Many students are curious to understand how the science economy works – they can even work in research laboratories and do not know how all this is funded. Students, in particular those who consider careers as scientists, are often surprised to learn that we spend so much time writing subsidies.
Where it could adapt
Each of my classes, large and small, conference and laboratory, includes a group project at the end. I always structure them as students submit a proposal for a page that describes the motivation behind their project and an approximate idea of their plan. The objective is to practice writing proposals (although much shorter), because this is exactly what scientists do in life.
This course component also gives me an opening to speak of the “real” subsidy process and, more broadly, the functioning of scientific financing. A few weeks ago, I took this opening. I talked about federal biomedical funding for about 20 minutes in a 50 -minute conference, during which I also presented the final projects of my students. You can reduce this to 5 minutes or up to 50, everything that works for your class.
You could also consider integrating this into a conference on the theme of broader “science and society”, in which you discuss the importance of communicating science to the public. A strong motivation for this is the drop in the value of science in the eyes of the public; For example, according to the 2023 Pew Research Center SurveyOnly 57% of Americans believe that science has a mainly positive effect on society.
To bring students to think about this, you could ask them to see the results of a 2014 PEW survey This illustrates the opinion gaps between scientists and the public on several key questions. As suggested in the useful “Get in search“Center for the Center for the improvement of mentorized experiences in research, you can then ask students why these gaps exist and how these shortcomings could affect the financing of science and science.
If you teach a higher division class on a specific subject, you might consider asking students to write subsidy proposals, then revise them collectively. For example, Harry Itagakiprofessor of biology and neuroscience at Kenyon College, asks his students to Write simulated NSF type subsidies proposals. And Rachel PentonAn educator in neuroscience and an education and commitment partner at the Allen Institute, taught the financing of her advanced neuropharmacology course, using a model in What students form grant panels and even develop their own examination criteria. Another option is an entire first cycle Course dedicated to the writing of subsidies.
If you teach in a program that has a kind of “ethical” requirement, this could also hold under this umbrella. For example, the appropriate use of public funding and transparent communication with the public on research are, basically, ethical questions.
A number of minutes that you spend the curtain where our medical advances and our scientific discoveries will be well spent.