Weekly Advocacy News Roundup
News
Lawmakers Seek NIH Hearing to Override Drug Patent
March 29, 2016 | Stat News
Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate are urging the Obama administration to hold a public hearing to determine whether NIH should override the patent on a prostate cancer drug in an effort to drive down prices. Their rationale: This drug is much more expensive in the U.S. than abroad and since federally funded research was used to develop the drug, federal authorities have a right to intervene.
- Learn about the public funding of neuroscience at SfN.org.
Indonesia Launches its First Multi-Year Funding Scheme for Scientific Research
March 31, 2016 | The Conversation
Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, Indonesia, with the support of Australia, the U.S., and the U.K., finally has a multi-year funding scheme to finance long-term world-class scientific research. The Indonesia Academy of Science, an honour society of distinguished scholars, yesterday launched the Indonesia Science Fund (ISF), the country’s first research funding organization that provides multi-year grants for frontiers of science research.
- Read about worldwide neuroscience initiatives at SfN.org.
NIH Supports Pilot Program to Find Support for Unfunded Grant Applications
March 24, 2016 | The Scientist
NIH is supporting the Online Partnership to Accelerate Research (OnPAR) program, a program that will try to match unfunded NIH grant applications with private research funders. The OnPAR program is operated by Leidos Life Sciences. NIH program officers will notify select grant applications about potential funding opportunities through the OnPAR program, and applicants will decide if they want to submit their materials to OnPAR for consideration for private funding.
- Watch a webinar about how federal funding affects your science at SfN.org
Articles of Interest
Zika Link to Fetal Brain Abnormalities Confirmed in New Study
March 31, 2016 | Medical News Today
A new study provides additional evidence for the link between infection with Zika virus during early pregnancy and brain abnormalities in the developing fetus. The research, by a Finnish-American team and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is also the first to report isolation of infectious Zika virus in cells cultured from fetal brain tissue.
- Read more about Zika virus and brain development at BrainFacts.org.
Opinion
Failure is Moving Science Forward
March 24, 2016 | Five Thirty Eight
Psychology, biomedicine and other fields of science have fallen into a crisis of confidence recently, after seminal findings could not be replicated in subsequent studies. These widespread problems with reproducibility underscore the reality that science is really, really hard. Even relatively straightforward questions cannot be definitively answered in a single study, and the scientific literature is riddled with results that won’t stand up. This is the way science works — it’s a process of becoming less wrong over time.
- Read about steps SfN has taken to tackle concerns of scientific rigor at SfN.org.
Science Can Bring Cuba, U.S. Together
March 31, 2016 | The Orlando Sentinel
As President Barack Obama receives a warm reception from the Cuban people and government, it is good to remember that even during some of the most difficult times in the Cuba-U.S. relationship, scientists worked quietly to keep alive partnerships that go back more than a century.
- Learn about global neuroscience advocacy at SfN.org.
Science by Donation: Is Scientific Crowdfunding Worth It?
March 31, 2016 | PLoS Blogs
What scientist doesn’t need more research funding? Even the most important research endeavors seem, in this day and age, to be constantly looking for additional funds to tackle a new problem, explore a new idea, or spur a collaboration. Money makes the scientific world go round, but getting it isn’t always easy to find, and government grants are getting more and more competitive.
- Find global sources of research funding at SfN.org.
