Death of the Mid-Career Investigator

Now that we Iowans have failed to select a candidate in the GOP caucuses, we can turn our attention to other political pursuits.  There is an important article just released in PLoS ONE by Kristin Matthews and colleagues at Rice University that describes the aging of the biomedical-research community in the US and its potential impact. 

The authors report that the average age of an NIH investigator rose from 39 to 51 between 1980 and 2008, while the average age of a new (first time) investigator rose from 36 to 42 during the same period. They also make some interesting comparisons to the average age of Nobel Laureates to determine if the rising age barriers at NIH could impact future innovative ideas and research. They found that during the same period, 96 scientists won a Nobel Prize in medicine or chemistry for biomedical research at an average age during the awarded research of 41 and 78% completed their research before age 51. They suggest that scientists do great work early in their careers but now those early careers won't be funded.

They conclude that "if nothing is done to reverse the rising age of PIs and first-time grantees, the scientific community could lose a generation of researchers, leading to an unsustainable biomedical research infrastructure and a dearth of talent participating in NIH-funded projects in the near future." I think a similar problem exists in infectious diseases and infection prevention research.

A world filled with only postdocs  (source Matthews et al PloS ONE)

Thus, there appears to be little funding or opportunity in the early and particularly mid-career period. This results in many fine and well-trained investigators leaving biomedical research in their 40's and never returning. Sure, a few lucky people will survive this pyramid scheme, but there won't be enough senior investigators in 10-20 years to mentor the next generation.

I'm not sure what the solution is or even the exact problem.  Is it ageism in scientific review committees or the lack of tenure-track faculty positions at the University level?  I suspect both of those issues are intertwined.

Source: Matthews et al. PLoS ONE 12/28/2011