The outbreaks keep coming. The research funds don't. (via propublica)
. This mindset has hindered scientists who study the complex dynamics that drive what’s known as spillover, the moment a pathogen leaps from one species to another.it is possible to predict when spillovers are going to happen
Olson has applied for grant after grant since 2015 but has struggled to get sufficient funding. Even before she applied, an employee at the National Science Foundation told her the study wouldn’t be novel enough because she wasn’t exploring an entirely new theory. Rather than strengthening her case, Eby and her colleagues’ prior work weakened Olsen’s chances. A spokesperson for the National Science Foundation said the agency could not comment on specific grants.
Olson pitched her study on Congolese bats to the National Institutes of Health. She got rejected, she said, because grant reviewers said that it wasn’t clear how the bat results could be linked to human infections. An NIH spokesperson said the agency doesn’t comment on specific grants, adding, “It is incumbent on investigators who want to study overlapping interests of animal and human health to clearly describe the relevance of their proposed research to the advancement of human health.
Plowright won a grant from an arm of the Department of Defense, but it only allowed two years for collecting field data. “They needed us to wrap things up and show results to justify our funding,” Plowright said. That schedule is the norm, not an outlier, in science.It’s not just that grants are short term. Some of the rare grant-giving initiatives that focus on prevention don’t last long either.
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