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Darby Saxbe

@darbysaxbe

Feb 1

When considering the value of publicly funded grants and foreign aid, it's worth zooming out to engage in a broader conversation: what is the common good and why should we invest in it? The common good is a term from philosophy that refers to the

Benefits that we garner from living in a society rather than as isolated individuals. We collectively contribute to, and share in, these benefits. I can't afford to build a backyard the size of Central Park, but I enjoy taking walks there when I visit NYC. I also like living

In a community with safe roads and bridges, clean water, trash collection, and first responders. I appreciate common goods that may not benefit me directly. My kids aren't babies any more, but I want to live in a society in which new parents get generous parental leave, because

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Darby Saxbe

@darbysaxbe

Jan 30

A driving assumption behind the admin's proposed restrictions on grants & aid seems to be that any use of "DEI" signals a political agenda that is antithetical to conducting good research. Let's unpack that. Why would DEI language be used in a grant?

Generally, when researchers use terms like "diversity" and "equity" in a grant proposal, they are focusing on one of two things:

1. Ensuring that the population being studied is representative
2. Ensuring that the research workforce is representative

Why might those goals align

with good science? In research, we care about "generalizability": the idea that our results can generalize to the broader population. We can't study every single human, so we recruit a sample that we think will reflect the population accurately. Let's say I want to study risk

Read 17 tweets

Darby Saxbe

@darbysaxbe

Jan 29

It's time to explain a little more about what 'diversity' and DEI initiatives mean in the context of NIH and NSF grants. One of NIH's funding mechanisms is called a 'diversity supplement.' What this means is that if an investigator already has a funded NIH grant (see my earlier

thread about how rigorous and selective the process is to obtain one), they can support a trainee (e.g., a graduate student) with a small amount of additional funding if the student is from a group that NIH considers to be historically underrepresented in biomedical science.

NIH uses a broad definition of "underrepresented": it can include race/ethnicity but also whether someone grew up in a rural area, grew up in poverty, was the first in the family to go to college, or is a veteran. So what is the goal of increasing the number of underrepresented

Read 10 tweets

Darby Saxbe

@darbysaxbe

Jan 29

A personal story about how the potential grant funding freeze might affect science. Right now, I'm in my fourth year of a 5-year NIH grant and my last year of funding is supposed to start February 1st. I'm supporting a postdoc, two graduate students, and two lab managers

on this grant, and am collecting time sensitive longitudinal data from families and kids. I recruited this sample when the parents were pregnant and am now assessing the kids' brain and behavior development when they turn 7.

My study design is based on kids in my sample being a certain age in order for me to collect the data, so even a temporary pause in funding disrupts the whole study. NIH has already given me the last four years of funding, so 80% of the budget has been spent,

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Darby Saxbe

@darbysaxbe

Jan 28

I need people to understand how difficult it is to get an NIH grant. You spend months writing a proposal, following strict guidelines that include a detailed multiyear budget, bios of everyone on your team, plans for participant safety & ethical conduct. Then you send it off -1/n

And if you didn't make any mistakes, it goes on to peer review. Three outside researchers with deep expertise in your research area write critiques covering multiple facets of your research (whether your topic is important, your methods are sound, your team is qualified)

And score your proposal based on their critiques. If you are lucky and your proposal scores in the top half of all proposals received by the NIH in that cycle, then you get discussed in a study section meeting by a few dozen peer reviews who pick apart every possible limitation

Read 12 tweets

Darby Saxbe

@darbysaxbe

Nov 7, 2024

Sharing one hopeful thought and one depressing thought for my fellow lefties.
Hopeful thought: In a closely divided country, the pendulum swings back and forth in terms of the ruling party. Trump will be too old to run in 4 years even if he could challenge the constitution; 1/

Vance has no charisma; and there is tons of talent on the Democrat side. It's possible that we could end up with a MORE progressive government in 4 years than if Harris had won.
Periods of right-wing dominance tend to wake up the left. During Trump's first term we had the 2/

resistance movements that led to MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Congress often goes to the opposing party, so we may flip it again in 2 years. We always had an unfavorable Senate map going into this election so the odds were long for Senate control. Globally, 3/

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