APS Observer - October 2000 (Volume 13, Number 8) Citing Job Market, Panel Tells NIH to Hold Current Levels of Behavioral PhDs By Sarah Brookhart APS Director of Communications A report on research training issued by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC) recommends that research training and "overall Ph.D. production" in most health sciences, including the behavioral and social sciences, should not be increased above current levels. This finding contradicts a previous NRC report on research training which called for substantial increases in training awards in behavioral science and other areas in order to expand the supply of people working on behavior-related health issues. This recommendation was even more striking in that the earlier committee also recommended the number of awards for biomedical sciences be held level. The report was written by the NRC Committee on National Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists. Every four years, the NRC, which serves as the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences, issues a report on the need for research personnel in behavioral, clinical and biomedical sciences, with specific focus on the size and scope of the National Research Service Awards (NRSA) training program. The project is Congressionally-mandated, and is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH is not compelled to implement the NRC's findings, but often is guided by the report. NIH did not implement an increase in behavioral science NRSAs as recommended in the previous NRC training needs report. Some Facts About NRSA The National Research Service Award (NRSA) program operated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supports research training at the predoctoral and postdoctoral levels. Awards may be made directly to individuals, who use the support at an institution of their choice, or to institutions, which in turn make awards to individuals. In 1975, the NRSA program provided funding to 14,443 trainees and fellows, nearly 45 percent more than NIH supported at that time through graduate research assistantships, postdoctoral research appointments, and career development awards. Today, that balance is reversed: In 1997, more than 30,000 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and young professionals were estimated to be supported by NIH through non-NRSA sources, compared to approximately half that number of NRSAs. Source: Addressing the Nation's Changing Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists, National Research Council, Washington, DC: August 2000. 'Many of the Worst Problems' Traditionally, the NRC committee has taken a marketplace "production and supply" approach to training issues, defining demand in terms of projected employment opportunities, labor force, and the need to replace aging scientists with new investigators. The 1994 committee broke with that tradition. Instead of looking strictly in terms of employment opportunities, the earlier committee said training also should be thought of in terms of the urgency and magnitude of the nation's health problems and the size of the workforce investigating those problems. "The solution to many of the worst problems facing the country are primarily behavioral in character," said the 1994 committee. It follows, according to the committee, that there should be a substantial increase in the number of investigators trained in behavioral and social science research. Richard F. Thompson was a member of the 1994 committee. "I am very disappointed" for a number of reasons, said Thompson regarding the more recent committee's actions. "For one thing, NIH never did follow the recommendations of the 1994 report. Second, the new report doesn't agree with the earlier recommendations" or the underlying rationale of those recommendations, which was that the "vast majority of health problems in this nation are tied to behavior," he said. "It's another case of the biomedical establishment dominating the training policies in health research. And I'm a biomedical researcher!" said Thompson, a Past President of APS. What Went Wrong As Thompson noted, the NRC committee consisted primarily of biomedical scientists. However, APS Fellow and Charter Member John Kihlstrom sat on the committee as one of two behavioral scientists, and was a vocal dissenter both about the committee process and the findings of the report. In fact, his dissenting views are published as an addendum to the report, an unusual occurrence in the consensus developing process of the NRC. Kihlstrom, who is a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Healthcare Organizations & Transactions as well as Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, identifies "several things that went wrong in the report process:" a lack of participation by behavioral and social science organizations, with the exception of APS; a lack of data on behavioral and social scientists involved in research on health and health care; the committee's "physician-focused" perspective; inappropriate analytical methodology; and committee members' misconceptions about behavioral and social science research. By failing to repeat or reinforce the 1994 recommendations and instead concluding that current training levels are sufficient to maintain an adequate supply of behavioral and social science researchers, "I believe that the Committee has made a serious mistake," said Kihlstrom, former editor of Psychological Science who is well-known for broad expertise across many areas of psychology. "Even if the overall size of the behavioral and social science workforce is adequate, the NIH should take steps to encourage more behavioral and social scientists to engage in research directly relevant to health and healthcare," said Kihlstrom. Instead, he said, "The implication [of the report] is that NIH does not need to take any further action to increase the size and scope of its training activities in the behavioral and social sciences." Commentary by Kihlstrom accompanies this article. Additional remarks as well as an on-line version of his dissenting views are available at: http://www.institute-shot.com/national_research_council_ report.htm. A Challenge for OBSSR Early in the NRC committee's deliberations, APS Executive Director Alan Kraut expressed concerns about NIH's ability to implement the NRC recommendations even if NIH had wanted to, because of the lack of a centralized structure for training. He also made the point that health needs as well as research opportunities are what should drive training. "After all," said Kraut, "the National Cancer Institute is a $2 billion-plus institution not only because of the research opportunities in cancer research. It is the largest NIH institute because cancer is rightly seen as an enormous public health problem by Congress and by the American public. I would argue that unhealthy behavior should be seen that same way." (The full text of Kraut's remarks to the committee are on the APS Website at www.psychologicalscience.org/.) The new NRC report "poses an interesting first challenge for Raynard Kington, the new director of OBSSR [NIH's Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research]," Kraut said. "OBSSR has made research training in behavioral and social science one of its priorities over the past few years, and this report should do little to affect OBSSR's justification or objectives for increasing training in these areas," he said. What's more, noted Kraut, reports from several institutes at NIH have been calling for increased training in behavioral and social sciences, particularly in translational and interdisciplinary research. And at about the same time the NRC released the new training needs report, its sibling organization, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), issued a report calling for NIH to dramatically expand its commitment to interdisciplinary research involving behavioral science. Kraut expressed the hope that OBSSR's efforts would focus on implementing the recommendations of those reports. A Shift from RAs to NRSAs This year, for the first time, the committee also considers research training mechanisms other than NRSA training grants and fellowships. It appears to be mildly critical of NIH's approach to training, citing a lack of information on research assistantships as evidence that NIH doesn't have a coordinated approach to training. To solve that problem, and to increase the quality of training, the committee recommended a gradual shift away from research assistantships under regular training grants in favor of increasing the number of NRSA fellowships. However, Charlotte V. Kuh, Executive Director of the NRC Office of Scientific and Engineering Personnel, which provided staff support for the committee, noted that the recommendation to increase NRSAs while decreasing research assistantships could cause a dilemma for NIH because most academic departments have research grants, while fewer have NRSA awards. The text of the NRC report is available online at: http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9827.html.