SfN Hill Day

Yesterday was SfN Hill Day, an annual event in which neuroscientists advocate for the importance of biomedical research and funding. From the SfN website, they note that the purpose of the event is to

"Meet with their congressional representatives to discuss advances in the field of neuroscience, share the economic and public health benefits of investment in biomedical research, and make the case for strong national investment in scientific research through NIH and NSF."

I searched through the hashtag, #SfNHillDay and recorded the Senators and Representatives (or staffers) that were tagged as having met scientists. In total, 18 Senators and 24 Representatives met with scientists to discuss the importance of funding and investment in neuroscience research. I found the timing of the Hill Day interesting as Rick Domann, a Professor from the University of Iowa has recently tweeted a few interesting articles about science funding in the US including one from Science Magazine where 1000 senior investigators dropped out last year and one from Research Trends about the NIH. Together these two articles suggest problems in biomedical funding. While I am all for more money being responsibly invested in biomedical research, in particular neuroscience, we should first consider fixing a broken system.

Going forward, it will be interesting to watch how these 42 congress people vote and advocate for science funding. As the 2015 NIH budget looks relatively flat, I wonder what the future of funding will look like. Will public funding levels continue to decrease and will we see a rise in crowdfunding of science? As scientists look towards this bureaucratic bypass I wonder what types of institutional oversight and quality control measures will be put forth in order to make sure that the best studies are being put forward for the opportunity of crowdfunding.