NIH, Science, and Baseball: Time for Reform?

Last fall I was reflecting on the state of science and the funding rate at the National Institutes of Health. Baseball was winding down for most teams, while again the World Series featured two teams from the east coast, while teams in the middle of America were again amazingly absent. There are all kinds of reasons why these teams are not as competitive, but in the end it comes down to money and components like market share. Yet unlike other professional sports in America, where salary caps have been used to level the playing field and to make small market teams more competitive, no such cap exists in baseball. While major league baseball has tried revenue-leveling plans (a luxury tax), in the end the wealthier teams get the better (higher-priced) players and the less-wealthy teams get to develop the players who end up going to the wealthier teams. The end result is diminished revenue for one set of teams as fans just stop showing up to the ballpark. Quite the opposite occurs for the wealthier teams as the fans come in droves to watch their stars come out at night. So what in the world does this have to do with science? Well, many see baseball as a pure game. There are dimensions for the diamond, but every field is unique beyond the actual diamond. There is no time limit for the game, something unique in nearly all professional sports. There is a one-on-one component as there is the constant battle between the hitter and the pitcher. Yet despite this very individual aspect of the game, baseball is a team sport in which team work is essential for success. To me, academic science is a pure pursuit, but like baseball it contains a number of polar opposites, somewhat like what Hegel described in his version of the dialectic theory. Science is a pursuit that requires a tremendous amount of personal drive and utilization of one’s intellect. Meanwhile, despite this individual effort, we work in a ‘‘team’’ environment, sharing our thoughts and work with others through publications and interactions at scientific congresses as well as other outlets that provide for exchange of ideas. We collaborate on projects with colleagues, maximizing the potential for success by bringing many different talents to bear on the project. Similar to baseball being a game where singles and doubles win games, science is a pursuit where all of our collective progress on a particular topic is additive and that is what often shifts our understanding of the underlying biology of a particular problem. Just like a home run is exciting and gets the fans cheering for more, big significant discoveries in science are also exciting. But in the end, like in baseball, it is the summation of incremental successes that move a field forward. As an industry colleague has routinely noted, academic scientists often work on their own time scale, yet we all work within the time frame of our grants. So many of the attributes of baseball are seen in science, but again, so are many of the disparities. So how does NIH fit into this paradigm? Simply put, certain institutions and laboratories continue to get rich, while others seek the equivalent of science life support. Institutions on the right and left coasts have more faculty, more ‘‘stars’’, and ultimately more infrastructure to support an enhanced research enterprise. As in baseball, this deepens the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Those of us at institutions in the middle of America who succeed, can transition to the coasts, like a rising star in baseball. Hence, the ultimate impact is a reduction in the small market institutions’ capacity to compete as they lose E. J. Murphy (&) Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Therapeutics, University of North Dakota, 501 N. Columbia Rd., Room 3700, Grand Forks, ND 58202-9037, USA e-mail: emurphy@medicine.nodak.edu