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I’m at the December Advisory Council to the Director (ACD) meeting today and tomorrow. Several updates and reports from ACD working groups are on the agenda.
Today, we’ll discuss the whirlwind of activities that NIH and HHS have been involved in related to the 2014 Ebola crisis, and we’ll hear updates on peer review evaluation and workforce diversity efforts. I’ll also be co-presenting with Dr. Sherry Mills, director of the Office of Extramural Programs within OER, and co-chair of the ACD’s Physician-Scientist Workforce working group. We’ll be speaking about how NIH will implement the recommendations of the physician scientist workforce working group. As you may recall, in June this working group released their report and recommendations to NIH on how to support the training, career development, and research of physician-scientists, including medical doctors, nurses, veterinarians, and other clinicians. You can take a look at some highlights from their report in one of my earlier blogs, and all of the data from this working group analysis is available for you to explore on RePORT, as well.
On Friday, we’ll hear about other exciting policy topics of interest to the extramural community, such as the clinical trials and data sharing efforts, as highlighted on my blog last month, and more on NIH’s efforts on enhancing scientific rigor and reproducibility of research results, as discussed on the blog earlier this year.
Please join us by tuning in to the live webcast today and tomorrow.
Well done two day meeting and careful work by the working groups. Many thoughts, but only one important point that nobody there had the courage to broach regarding the Day 2 Reproducibilty Report and advisement. C.P. Snow stated it in “The Search” many years ago when he said “…if false statements are to be allowed, if they are not discouraged by every means we have, science will lose its one virtue, truth. The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements in error, we open the way, don’t you see, for false statements by intention.” Note that Snow was relating the philosophy of science at Cambridge during the foundations of what would produce the greatest scientific achievements of modern times. You don’t achieve that level of science otherwise. There need to be real penalties for irreproducibilty to achieve your goals.