As everyone who has every read anything about the history of science knows, brilliant new ideas generally come from brilliant young people. But as many familiar with the funding practices of the National Institutes of Health are also probably aware, the scientists it supports have been getting older and older. In 1980, the average NIH-funded investigator was 39 years old, according to a paper in PLoS One. In 2008, the typical NIH grant recipient was 51. In 1980, researchers got a first NIH grant at an average age of 36, but in 2008, that milestone came at 42.
Does the graying of the research community "impact innovative ideas and research"? ask Kirstin R.W. Matthews of Rice University and co-authors. Indeed it might, they conclude from a statistical comparison of several bodies of scientists. The average age when researchers who won Nobel Prizes over the last thirty years did their "groundbreaking research" was 41; more than three quarters had done it by age 51. This suggests, the authors write, that the trend toward seniority can "inhibit research potential and novel projects, and could impact biomedicine and the next generation scientists in the United States."
As it happened, Zerhouni made the remark at the press conference that announced the National Research Council study of the crisis for young biomedical researchers, Bridges to Independence. That document detailed the rising age of first NIH grantees and suggested some methods of aiding young researchers. The committee that wrote the study, as we reported at the time, was chaired by Thomas Cech, whose own Nobel had come at the same age as Einstein's.
But even if the point has been made before -- although Zerhouni hadn't made a statistical study and the proposals in Bridges have done little to improve the situation -- it is well worth making again. Young people are likelier to make transformative discoveries than older people. If you want to encourage those ideas, you have to make it possible for young people to develop them. The current structure of scientific funding, which encourages long postdoctoral appointments and overproduction of Ph.D.s and provides scanty opportunities for them to establish independent research careers, continues to do exactly the opposite.
