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 Director Elias Zerhouni reporting that NIH supports more scientists over 70 than under 30.

At the National Science Foundation, the average time since receiving the Ph.D. for first-time principal investigators increased from 8.5 years in 1990 to 9.3 years in 2006. The median age for NSF’s first-time award recipients is 37-38.

Officially, NIH lauds transformative research (i.e., work that makes a colossal difference, such as the transistor). But in 2004, the first year of a program to support risky projects with potentially high payoff, 1,300 applications were received, of which nine were funded. A new NIH program to support highly innovate research by new investigators drew 2,100 applications and made 14 awards. Things are said to be better now, but apparently not much better.

The latest rerun on these issues is in a report laden with big names in and around science. Titled “ARISE” (for “Advancing Research in Science and Engineering”), subtitled “Investing in Early-Career Scientists and High-Risk, High-Reward Research,” the report comes from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a venerable schmoozing and policy-research center in Cambridge, Mass.

The chairman of the producing committee was Thomas R. Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, joined by 21 colleagues, including several other Nobelists, plus a flock of lab directors, academic and industrial chieftains, and assorted apparatchiks of the science system. In the works for a year, and drawing on consultation with scientists in various sectors and of various ages, educators, and philanthropists, the report was released June 3 at the National Press Club, a setting of choice for report producers seeking notice in Washington.

The solutions offered for the often-cited problems of youth neglect and risk aversion were as might be expected: Set aside more money for young scientists; lengthen grant durations to reduce time spent seeking grants; prod program officers to favor the young; gamble on long-shot research proposals that may produce important results; tolerate a high rate of failures, and so forth.

Recommendations of a less-often-heard nature included a call for universities to pay a greater portion of faculty salaries from their own resources, rather than from research grants, the aim being to free up government money for research. Universities were also urged to put more of their own money into laboratory construction, instead of relying on indirect-cost reimbursements to pay off construction debt. Neither recommendation is likely to appeal to the flint-hearted managers of academic finance, or the university development hounds pursuing philanthropy with promises of donor names emblazoned on buildings.

Transformative research and the support of youth are easy to laud but extremely difficult to achieve in a scientific enterprise whose habits, values, and institutions have changed very little over many decades.

(In a coming post I’ll discuss plans announced June 6 for revisions to the NIH awards system.)

The difficulty is that beginners fare poorly in the competitive-award systems of the granting agencies for academic research. Mandatory peer review at NIH and NSF wards off pork-seeking legislators, which accounts for the absence of these agencies from the lengthening rolls of academic earmarks. But competition burdens beginners.

Seasoned scientists can submit a track record, they’re wiser about what’s currently selling in scientific Washington, and they’re sensitive to the hidden snags of the review process. Scientific folklore holds that in hard times (times are always hard), reviewers are keen to pick winners to avoid wasting precious research money. So established scientists douse them with data to show they’re halfway to success. Beginners, usually coming off a postdoctoral fellowship where they’ve worked under a grant-holding lab boss, rarely have data of their own. Thus, in science, too, those who have get more.

These problems have long been recognized. In 2005, Bruce Alberts, then finishing his second term as president of the National Academy of Sciences, told me in an interview for my book “Science for Science” that his “generation had independence at 27, 28, not 40.” Alberts added that “the free market doesn’t work,” and he said, “All the old people get all the money from the federal governments … and the young people have to go and work in an environment, a lab of 50 people, in order to get support…. This is not the way to get good science.”

The obvious solution, more money for youth, is feasible when budgets are rising, but not under the stagnation that now prevails. Senior scientists assert that they earned their grants with scientific productivity, certified by periodic peer review. The Congressional script is easy to imagine: Gray-bearded professor in the witness chair: “Mr. Chairman, for 25 years, grants from NIH have enabled my laboratory to produce outstanding results in cancer research. Now, they want to close down my laboratory to shift money to beginning researchers who are yet to prove themselves. This is a cruel blow against the American people.”

Long-shot projects with high payoff potential also clash with the financial and political realities in Washington. Heads of government research agencies are under constant political pressure to produce visible results. Grant applications call for applicants to describe the practical results that can be expected from successful research. Official endorsement of risk-taking, and assurances that failure will be tolerated, notwithstanding, program officers and their bosses are understandably leery about far-out projects whose payoff, if ever, can be years away, even beyond their time in office. In the culture of modern research, the “skunk works” and “bootleg” projects are testimonials to the fear of unconventional notions and departures from established procedures.

A minor but interesting matter in this time of financial deprivation for science: What was the cost of the ARISE report’s exploration of familiar territory? The report acknowledges “support of this work” from the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, Stephen D. Bechtel Jr., the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, and the Merck Company Foundation. I asked the Academy of Arts and Sciences for the price tag. Response: The person with the information was out of the office.

Politicking by report is a mini-industry in Washington. From acknowledgment of the costs of similar past reports, my guess is that, given travel and other expenses for the committee members and staff, ARISE cost around $1-million — about what it takes to equip a modest lab and support a young scientist for several years.

The ARISE report is available on line at here.