Dr. Tony Fauci has become a bit of a household name these past few weeks, and probably the only member of the Trump administration with bipartisan credibility. @m_heggeness, Wes Greenblatt and I can shed some light on the the origin story of this medical superhero. 1/N 
You see, back in 1966, this young graduate from the Cornell University Medical College applied to the Associate Training Program [ATP] run by the National Institutes of Health and was one of about 185 selected. 2/N
After two years of internship/residency at the New York Hospital, in the summer of 1968 he started as a Clinical Associate in Bethesda. Here is the ATP application index card. 3/N
This was the Vietnam era. The young men who were selected to receive this intensive research experience became commissioned officers in the U.S. Public Health Service, and as such their participation fulfilled a draftee's military service requirement. 4/N
The NIH ATP was a large human capital intervention. Not because it selected a particularly large cohort—even at its 1973 peak, the program drafted only 229 associates, or approximately 2.5% of graduating male students. 5/N
...but because it induced a very high proportion of eligible participants to actually apply, from around 20% in 1963 to close to 80% in 1971. 6/N
Though some applicants had prior exposure to biomedical research in medical school or during their undergraduate studies, the unpopularity of the war drove many physicians who otherwise would not have been interested in a research career to apply for one of these positions. 7/N
Sidebar: After the war ended, trainees began to refer themselves ironically as ``Yellow Berets,'' a derogatory term used to contrast draft dodgers with the elite Green Berets. 8/N
The war + ample NIH budget provides us with a quasi-experimental lever to disentangle the role of sorting from that of training and mentorship, always a vexing challenge in empirical studies of the scientific labor market. 9/N
Because luckily, we have a pretty good control group: the second-round applicants to the program, meaning folks who passed a first screen, visited the NIH campus to try to match with a laboratory, but were ultimately selected. 10/N
It turns out that the NIH was, back in these days, what you might call a "hot research environment" as you might have also called the MIT Econ department in the 1960s/70s, the Cavendish Lab in the first half of the 20th century, or the Bell Laboratories from 1950 onwards. 11/N
And the NIH officials in this golden era had a theory of how you make researchers out of young physicians. They funded this training program. They induced a bunch of people to take the plunge. And these people went on to change the face of medicine. 12/N
This was Dr. Fauci said about the NIH Associate Training Program in a 1998 interview: "[The ATP] did not help [my career], it made it... I followed a pathway that was a combination of hard work, some talent and being in the right place at the right time... 13/N
None of that would have happened had I not come down here as a Clinical Associate... [I would have] gone to Vietnam for a few years in the Navy, [and then] I would have probably returned to New York Hospital... 14/N
I would probably be practicing medicine right now on 69th Street and First Avenue. The Clinical Associate program put me on a career track that I am still on. 15/N
The paper is here. If you are a social scientist wondering how we dealt with selection bias, it's all in here. mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/doc…
Here is a non-technical summary. nber.org/digest/sep19/w…
Addendum: Bob Seger wrote a parody of Barry Sadler's "The Ballad of the Green Berets" called "The Ballad of the Yellow Beret,'' which was composed by "D. Dodger" in 1966. clyp.it/e1ec2yx0
For those who read until the end and want a bit more on selection. If you routinely are involved in grad admission, ask yourself whether, after narrowing down the applicant pool to a shortlist, you can confidently suss out research potential within the group of plausible admits.
If you think you can, then kudos, and you ought to take our results with a grain of salt. If you are more humble regarding your ability to pick superstars, then you will find our results more convincing.
Here is what Harold Varmus (ATP 68, Nobel Prize 1989) says about his road to Bethesda in his autobiography.
