If the reason given on Robert S. Decker’s voice mail were always true, there wouldn’t be a problem. “This is Bob and Marlene Decker. We’re both doing experiments in the lab, so please leave a message.”
But Mr. Decker, who runs a cardiology research laboratory with his wife, Marlene, at Northwestern University, is almost as likely to miss a call because he is filling out paperwork or in a meeting, as he is because he is examining cell cultures.
So Mr. Decker, a professor of medicine and of cell and molecular biology, helped devise a survey to quantify how much time researchers spend not doing research. The survey analyzed the responses of 6,083 university researchers, in fields as diverse as agriculture and astrophysics, making it the most comprehensive study ever done on the subject.
The survey found that scientists spend 42 percent of research time filling out forms and in meetings. With those hard numbers to back his case, Mr. Decker hopes to persuade the federal government to amend its grant-making system.
The study — sponsored by the Federal Demonstration Partnership, a coalition of university and federal officials dedicated to streamlining government research regulations — confirmed what scientists say they already knew: They are swamped. But it also revealed surprises about the ways in which they are swamped. For one, the distribution of unpopular tasks was wide.
No one task stood out as overly onerous. Instead, it was the accumulation of small tasks, such as procuring equipment, managing payroll, and writing follow-up reports on how research funds were used, that swallowed up hours.
“We’re just dealing with this trivia,” said Marvin R. Paule, chairman of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at Colorado State University at Fort Collins and a critic of the administrative burden on scientists. “I’m not saying it’s trivial to deal with human subjects or animal subjects properly; it’s just the bureaucracy.”
More Flexible Dollars
Close to two-thirds of scientists who responded to the survey said they could have saved at least three hours per week with more support. Eleven percent estimated that they could have saved at least nine hours.
The likely reason for the discrepancy in the number of hours saved, Mr. Paule said, was that larger labs use postdocs or technicians to handle the paperwork. Small or medium-size laboratories, he said, suffer most under the current system because they cannot spare people.
Indeed, three-fourths of the scientists, who normally guard research dollars assiduously, said they would be willing to hire administrative help. Some said they would use up to 10 percent of a grant for that help, if it were not for federal caps on such assistance.
Administrative help is capped at 26 percent of indirect costs (the costs of overhead, such as utilities). Because departmental and universitywide administrative assistance must also be covered by this 26 percent, little money is usually left over for help for individual scientists. The federal government does allow a few large-scale experiments to devote some direct-cost money to administrative help.
As part of the recommendations included with the survey, which will be released in late August, Mr. Decker proposes that the White House Office of Management and Budget, the federal agency in charge of accounting procedures, make the cap flexible, so scientists can redirect funds to hire more administrative help.
“It is not my opinion that these kind of burdens will go away,” Mr. Decker said. “It’s a question of allowing faculty to deal with them.”
Comparing a science laboratory to an entrepreneurial firm and the principal investigator on a grant to a chief executive officer, Mr. Paule said, “In industry you would never expect the CEO of even a small company to not have a secretary.”
Past Success
The recent survey was undertaken because the federal government has been receptive to changes in the past, said Nancy Wray, chairman of the Federal Demonstration Partnership. In the late 1980s, the government put in place “expanded authority” rules. They expedited the approval of grant dollars and allowed scientists to quickly reallocate money designated for one expense — equipment, for example — to cover another, unforeseen cost. A survey conducted by the partnership in 1990 to measure the effect of those rules indicated that principal investigators had reduced their administrative work by 15 percent.
“It’s what you would do with your home budget, what you’d do with your business budget,” Mr. Paule said. “Expanded authority allowed us to shift money between categories. It made a lot of sense.”
All told, the 2,662 respondents to the 1990 survey reinvested 38.5 years of effort into research. The report even voiced hope that expanded authority might be “changing the culture” by “breaking the constraints” of what they saw as excessive grant oversight.
But that never happened. Instead what researchers see as regulatory creep has been steady. A cap on indirect costs was imposed in 1991. Then Congress enacted strict health-privacy laws in 1996, which made much medical research more costly. Terrorism laws enacted after September 11 required that researchers carefully account for select agents, potentially hazardous microbes, and chemicals stored on campuses.
Many scientists also serve on institutional review boards, which can occupy a dozen faculty members twice a month for meetings. Even the recent “Faculty Burden Survey” itself, an anonymous questionnaire, required a human-subjects review to make sure it did not violate ethical guidelines.
A Burden Overseas
The administrative burden is not confined to the United States. Scientists say all governments are strict in accounting for their yen or euros.
Having left his research job in the United States to become deputy director of Singapore’s Genome Institute, Lawrence W. Stanton has experience with both Asian and American systems. “I don’t see the U.S. as all that unique. If you are spending someone else’s money then you have to be accountable,” he said in an e-mail message. “Much of the time spent on grant writing in the U.S. is the result of more people chasing fewer dollars.”
He added that “in comparison to working in small businesses,” government regulations both in the United States and abroad are “frustrating” and “counterproductive.”
Mr. Stanton and National Science Foundation employees who handle grants in other countries said that the burden on faculty members in Europe and Asia was generally less than in the United States, though not by much. The major exception, all agreed, is the European Union.
Many young scientists who hear such horror stories about research in any country are lured by promises of uninterrupted bench work (and no teaching duties) in industry and have opted out of academics altogether, Mr. Decker and Mr. Paule agreed. In some ways, then, the “Faculty Burden Survey” might underestimate the cost to university research because it does not take into account the number of young scientists who leave, or never enter, academe.
American students have been walking away from research in greater numbers, said Mr. Paule. However, many foreign students still find universities in the United States attractive. “Go to a biochemistry journal and look through the list of names on papers. Half are foreign names,” he said. “Americans are saying, ‘It’s not a job I want.’”
THE BURDEN OF PAPERWORK
Key findings of the “Faculty Burden Survey” report, which was completed by more than 9,200 faculty members. It will be released in August:
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Scientists spent 42 percent of their “research time” on administrative tasks. Those tasks were split between pre-grant (22 percent) and postgrant work (20 percent).
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The three tasks cited as the most onerous were filling out grant progress reports, hiring personnel, and managing laboratory finances.
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Scientists got the most administrative support for financial management, such as payroll, and the least for grant reports.
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Tasks that received little such support included evaluating laboratory personnel, monitoring conflicts of interest, and applying for patents.
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Some administrative burdens were specific to faculty subgroupsfor example, filing patent applications for engineering professors. Time spent on institutional review boards was listed as a burden for the largest number of faculty subgroups.
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Faculty members estimated they could save an average of four hours per week with more administrative help. Almost 6 percent of respondents thought they could save more than 10 hours. Slightly more than one-third thought they would save less than two hours.
SOURCE: Federal Demonstration Partnership
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Volume 52, Issue 45, Page A23