Peer review is a system that issues rewards before the game begins.

The outcome is grousing by scientists who don’t get rewards, aka grants, and widespread suspicions that winners craftily manipulated the system. In the best of times, demand exceeds the supply of grant money. But when the imbalance is stark, as it is now, moods turn glum, dark suspicions flourish, and trumpets sound for reforming the peer-review system.

The National Institutes of Health, the world’s colossus for reviewing research applications and awarding research money, has just come through a long and strenuous reform effort for peer review, with paltry results. Allowance must be given for the possibility that, if implemented, some improvements may ensue. But don’t look for biomedical nirvana. (“NIH Offers Huge Increase in Money for Some Grant Reviewers,” Chronicle.com June 6.)

Sure, as proposed, shorter...

The science establishment is grieving again about the poor odds confronting young scientists seeking money for research. It’s also worried about another old problem, Washington’s aversion to paying for risky but potentially important research. Something must be done about both shortcomings, say the senior savants, or American science will dwindle away and the nation will suffer. These are well-known diffficulties, often deplored, but so far limited to token corrections, if any at all.

There’s much to worry about. At the National Institutes of Health, age 42 is the average for first-time recipients of primary research grants (known as R01’s). Between 1980 and 2006, the share of R01 grants going to first-time investigators declined from 33 percent to less than 25 percent. It’s commonly said that youngsters produce many of the big findings in science. So, it’s jarring to find NIH...

The chieftains of science are grumpy. The marathon presidential primary campaigns have appealed, and pandered, to many interests — the jobless, the inflation-pressed middle class, environmental purists, the medically uninsured, the war-weary, and others. But nothing for science, apart from a few perfunctory nods from the campaign trail.

Science is hurting for money and political respect. Budgets — mostly from the federal government — are big but stagnant, crimping new projects, which are essential for a vibrant scientific enterprise. Without letup, the Bush administration has been trampling scientific sovereignty, limiting federal support of stem-cell research, scoffing at global warming and endangered-species protection, bowing to crackpot challenges to evolutionary theory. The President’s science adviser, science’s own man in Washington (it’s always a man), is an invisible man. Bad ...

How many physicians are needed to care for the population of the United States?

There’s no sure answer. Nonetheless, given the long lead times required for expanding doctor training, the medical-education establishment is on a track aimed at increasing output 30 percent by 2020. Five new allopathic schools are in the works, which will bring the national total to 134, and many schools are expanding class sizes. Expansions are also under way in osteopathic training, which now numbers 25 schools.

In the economics of higher education, there is nothing like a medical school for gobbling up money. Class sizes are tiny — often around 100 — and faculty members far outnumber students. Labs are necessary for the pre-clinical years, and hospital affiliation is a must. Little wonder, then, that groundbreaking for a new medical school is a rare event.

Great uncertainties about expansion are...

Puzzlement is an appropriate reaction to news that a major university concealed grants of research money from a tobacco company and agreed to give the company control over publication and patent rights.

So much disgrace for so little gain! And at a time when universities value pristine images for winning public support and money. Why do they do it?

As disclosed May 22 in The New York Times (“At One University, Tobacco Money Is Not Taboo; It’s a Secret”) the culprit in this instance is Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), a state institution. The tobacco firm is a Richmond, Va., neighbor, Philip Morris, the nation’s largest tobacco company. The contract between the two was unearthed by the Times under the Virginia Freedom of Information law. The amount of money involved was not disclosed, but probably was a minor amount in the context of VCU’s $227-million per year in government a...

Concluding my discussions (in posts May 12 and May 15) of the humanities and government research money.

Faring poorly in access to the U.S. Treasury, the humanities can helplessly endure their neglect relative to the physical, biological, and social sciences. Or they can take inspiration from the social sciences, which, formerly impoverished, are doing fairly well in the Washington money chase.

With a change of administration coming in January, now is the time for the politicos of the humanities to shift from lamenting to scheming. The early months of a new presidency favor bureaucratic innovation. Later, change comes hard as midterm elections loom and partisan squabbling intensifies.

The humanities’ goal should be inclusion under the financial umbrella of the National Science Foundation, where the once-neglected social and behavioral sciences have found a reliable patron. This ...

While the sciences feast at the federal trough — looking up only to complain of deprivation — the humanities are allotted skimpy federal assistance. The budget tells the sad story: $30-billion annually dispensed to academic science and engineering by a flock of federal agencies; $144-million for the sole agency focused on supporting the humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

As described in my post of May 12, “Where Are the Arts and Humanities in the D.C. Money Chase?,” science is politically an easier “sell” than the humanities. But in addition to that natural advantage, universities maintain a host of Washington-based organizations to keep up and expand the flow of government money into their laboratories. Nothing comparable exists for the humanities, I noted — which brought rejoinders from several organizations that claim dedication and diligence in promoting...

“When I find myself in the company of scientists,” W.H. Auden wrote some 50 years ago, “I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.”

Auden might have written the same today. The scientists, for all their complaints of financial neglect and political bashing, continue to do relatively well in pay, facilities, and status, outdistanced only by the law faculty, medical-faculty superstars, and football coaches.

Lamenting the disparities between scientific and humanities-and-arts faculties, two seasoned academic observers wrote in The Chronicle (March 17, 2006) that “never before has there been such inequality among the disciplines and schools that make up a university. … Disciplines like history, sociology, philosophy, the visual arts, and literature were once seen as the heart of the university. … But over the last 10 years, faculty members ...

I’ve checked my spam mail, e-mail, caller ID, and even the overflowing wastepaper basket. As I expected, David Rockefeller hadn’t attempted to consult with me before he recently chose to give Harvard $100-million from his personal fortune. The purpose of the donation, according to the official Harvard University Gazette, is “to increase learning opportunities dramatically for Harvard undergraduates through international experiences and participation in the arts.”

Now, none but a churl would want to deprive Harvard undergraduates of an increase in international experiences and participation in the arts. There can be no doubt that the gift, the “largest from an alumnus in Harvard’s history,” reports the Gazette, will be as well spent as such lodes ever are. Also, a nostalgic element in the gift merits notice: Rockefeller, class of 1936, values foreign experience from having witnessed the...

“There are over five million working scientists and engineers in the U.S., under three million farm workers. The U.S. government spends about $70-billion per year on R&D, only about $17-billion in government payment to farms. So, by objective measures the R&D community is bigger and the federal government has a bigger stake in it than in agriculture. But by any measure, the farm community is orders of magnitude more influential politically.”

It was nearly 20 years ago that one of the wise men of research policy and politics, Roland Schmitt, then president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, made that astute observation. Update the numbers — more money, more scientists and engineers, but even fewer farmers — and it remains true. As ever, ag is a formidable force on Capitol Hill, and science isn’t. With hard lobbying and campaign cash, agriculture overrides economic and scientific sense...