NIH Open Mike Blog - 2023 Year In Review

David Kosub: Hello, and welcome to NIH's Extramural Nexus Television. I am David Kosub. I am part of the NIH's Office of Extramural Research Communications Shop, and I am glad to say that we're going to be having our 2023 year in review with our fearless leader, Dr. Michael Lauer. He serves as the NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, also the Head of the Office of Extramural Research. And he's going to tell us all about his thoughts on how we did last year and what's coming up for 2024. So, Mike, welcome.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Hi, David. Well, thank you very much, and first of all, I would like to take this opportunity to wish everybody a happy new year. I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday season, good time with your family and friends. Yeah, so 2023 was quite a year, a lot of news for NIH. Perhaps the most important is that we have a new NIH director. We're very excited about that. That happened late in the year. And there were a number of other developments that occurred. We are in the process of implementing the simplified review framework, something that will be ... that I'm sure is of great interest to the community and then a number of events that came up at the ACD, the Advisory Committee to the Director meeting last December, and I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to talk about those.

David Kosub: Yeah, definitely a lot going on, and I should have wished everyone a happy new year, as well. But, yeah, so talking about, yeah, just continuing that thread about the ACD, you mentioned a lot of the discussion in the last one was on postdocs and the workforce more generally. We definitely talked a lot about that over the last year. We supported another record number of early-stage investigators. We have an interest in seeing where postdocs might be going and maybe even taking recommendations on increasing stipends. And someone like myself with an interest in researchers with disabilities, we're even talking about some of that. There's been a lot in the work force, basically. What do you ... What are your thoughts on that? How did 2023 go in that aspect?

Dr. Michael Lauer: Well, yeah. That's exactly right. Certainly in the world of postdoctoral training, a huge amount happened over the past year, and I'm sure we all ... Our audience is very much well-aware of that. So we had a working group that was convened by the advisory committee to the director. I was a member of the working group, and it was an enormous pleasure to work with Dr. Schwetz and Dr. Berger and all our various colleagues on the working group. The report is quite comprehensive. It's interesting. It's informative. And I think the recommendations are quite striking and are definitely worthy of a lot of discussion. Perhaps the most important recommendation is the very first one dealing with increasing the stipend level for our NRSA program. That is something which is ... Dr. Bertagnolli said is under active discussion here at the NIH. But I would really strongly encourage you all to take a look at ... at the very least take a look at the presentation and take a look at the report. There's a great deal in there. It's not only about postdocs and what happens with postdocs. It's also about the nature of how science is conducted in the lab in this rapidly evolving environment that we're currently in.

David Kosub: Well, rapidly evolving environment, that kind of leads actually perfectly to my next question. It's constantly evolving. We ask a lot of our researchers as part of our efforts to ensure accountability and stewardship in the funds that we support, and we recognize it takes a lot of time and efforts to kind of address or being responsive to some of these evolving needs that researchers face. What are you, what are we, what are ... How are we going to be addressing this sort of thing, especially thinking about last year and moving forward?

Dr. Michael Lauer: Well, it's an interesting ongoing tension, and I think it's a tension that's been going on for many decades, which is, on the one hand, the interest on the part of many of our constituents to assure proper accountability and oversight, and on the other hand, to have our process be as streamlined, user-friendly and least bureaucratic as possible. And certainly with the postdocs, there were recommendations that postdocs who were supported on research grants should also have development plans and that there should be some processes in place to make sure that they are getting appropriate mentoring and appropriate career development advice. Okay. Well, that's great. But then how do you actually do that? I know that there is a great deal of interest in other areas, as well, including research security, biosketch, other support forms, various misconduct-related issues. And so this is something that is part of an ongoing dialog that's an ongoing tension between on the one hand assuring the appropriate oversight, accountability and stewardship, and on the other hand, making our systems as user-friendly as possible.

David Kosub: Well, along that ongoing dialog as it relates to misconduct, since you mentioned that one, definitely had a lot of things to discuss last year in the misconduct space. And you met with Sheila Garrity, the new Director of the HHS Office of Research Integrity.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Yeah. Yeah.

David Kosub: There's the new request for information on the ... on changes to the research misconduct guidelines and regulations. We had lots of work in the professional misconduct space from harassment or preventing harassment, preventing discrimination in science. How do you feel like things are moving forward in that space?

Dr. Michael Lauer: Yeah, so there's a lot going on there. We're thrilled about the new director at ORI, and, yes, we had a fantastic discussion with Sheila Garrity. It was really wonderful to sit down with her. And we continue to have a very strong working relationship with ORI. I meet with Sheila Garrity on a regular basis, and our staff and our colleagues at ORI are frequently in touch with one another. So that is, of course, an important area of development, are the updated regulations. On the professional misconduct issues and in particular harassment and discrimination, I think that this is the item that's actually taking up more time than anything else right now. We probably spend more time in ... within our Research Integrity and Compliance group dealing with harassment and discrimination concerns than any other. We continue to get a very large number of allegations, and, David, I recall we put out a block last year on the number of different kinds of allegations that we get. And we're getting over 500 of these a year. Research misconduct, classic research misconduct, falsification and fabrication and plagiarism unfortunately continue to be active areas of work. there have been some high-profile cases over the past year, and this is another area where we're continuing to pay a lot of attention.

David Kosub: Yeah. That blog you mentioned was actually a direct result of our previous conversation and ...

Dr. Michael Lauer: Oh, okay. All right.

David Kosub: Who knows what's going to come out of this, out of this conversation?

Dr. Michael Lauer: Right, right.

David Kosub: Definitely some folks have to checked it out. Check that one out and a couple case studies on how we're addressing harassment. But on a separate note, you mentioned Dr. Bertagnolli, Monica Bertagnolli, the new NIH Director. I suspect lots of great changes are afoot for 2024 as we're working with the new NIH Director, but how do you kind of envision the extramural research, the extramural grant policy world, research world, kind of interacting in this wider, changing NIH environment? And maybe other, even going wider and strengthening relationships outside of NIH with Congress and our partners across the academic institutions and stuff like that, we did a lot in this last year, and I suspect that will be continuing.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Yeah, so our goal in the Office of Extramural Research and the Office of the Director is to enable the director to be successful. She is in the process of articulating her top goals and her top priorities, and we will do everything that we can so that she will achieve those goals and priorities. And this will almost certainly evolve, I anticipate fairly quickly, over the next few months as Dr. Bertagnolli continues the transition that she's in the middle in right now. We are so excited. I have to say, she's an incredible visionary and leader, and she's just full of ideas. She's a brilliant scientist and clinician. She has an interesting background. She grew up in rural America, still has strong connections to rural America. She's also a surgeon and was an academic surgeon for many years in prestigious places. So we're really excited, and I have every reason to be optimistic. And our primary role in the Office of Extramural Research and with Grants Policy and grants Procedures is to help her achieve those goals.

David Kosub: All right. I need you to put your crystal ball in front of you, and we're going to be looking out into the future, 2024 as it relates to what we're going to be doing. Let's ... What do you project? What are we going to be focusing on? There's tons of different things that we could be looking at in 2024. Where is the direction? Maybe something with AI is going to be coming up. Who knows. But I can just think of all sorts of different stuff. What do you anticipate for this upcoming year?

Dr. Michael Lauer: So I watched this great documentary, I don't know, a few months ago, called "It Ain't Over." Now, it's really ...

David Kosub: Story of my life.

Dr. Michael Lauer: ... delightful. It's a beautiful documentary about Yogi Berra and about his life. One of the ... If you haven't seen it, it's great. It's so inspiring, and especially if you're having a bad news day, it would be well worth it to watch. So ... And it points out that Yogi Berra didn't only say very wise things, which I'm about to get to, but also that he was an amazing baseball player. He was an absolutely amazing baseball player, and unfortunately that bit has been forgotten. Anyway, Yogi Berra is attributed to have said that prediction is very difficult, especially about the future, although I have heard that it wasn't actually Yogi Berra who said it, that it was actually Niels Bohr, and that's, by the way, another movie , something with a different tone. That was the "Oppenheimer" film where Niels Bohr was a character. And Niels Bohr is also said to have stated that prediction is very difficult about the future. So I am going to be very careful about making any predictions. I think one prediction I can make with a great deal of comfort is that we are going to be working on the recommendations for the postdoc working group. That, I can say. I can say that because we're actually doing it. But this is something that obviously is going to be top priority for us this year, is to go through those recommendations one by one, figure out what we can do quickly, what we will do over a somewhat longer period of time and then figure out how the actual implementation will take place. I think the other thing I can predict is that we will be hearing a lot from Dr. Bertagnolli about her priorities and her vision, obviously very excited about that.

David Kosub: Well, as it relates to Yogi, if you see a ... coming to a fork in the road, take it.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right.

David Kosub: Yeah.

Dr. Michael Lauer: And there's a lot of things that I haven't said that I supposedly said, or something like that.

David Kosub: We documented everything you said, Mike. Don't worry.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Yeah. Right.

David Kosub: So a final question as we take a ... as we wrap this up, I ask this every year, and I always anticipate what you're going to say as it relates to, what's your resolutions coming forward? And as it relates to me, I resolve to continually be an amazing person. So far, I'm winning on that, so it's ... your resolutions.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Well, I'm not waiting for that. I think it's happened, and I think you ...

David Kosub: There you go.

Dr. Michael Lauer: ... are an amazing person, and I have to say it's an enormous pleasure to work ...

David Kosub: I'll take it.

Dr. Michael Lauer: ... with you. And so I think I said last year that I don't do new year's resolutions because they just generally don't work. But if I'm going to have to make a new year's resolution, my new year's resolution, David, is that you will continue to be an amazing person.

David Kosub: Your check is in the mail. Your check is in the mail.

Dr. Michael Lauer: And I do ... I want to also use this opportunity to appreciate David and his colleagues, all the work that's done on the Nexus and on the Open Mic blog. And we want to thank all of you for being so engaged and for taking a look at the Nexus and the blog and the podcasts and all the various other kinds of other outreach that we are engaged in. It is really important. Always, it's really important, but especially, let's say, now when we're now ... We have a new director onboard. It is really important that we remain engaged with one another, that we have a proper dialogue, that we have a high-quality and constructive dialogue with the extramural research community, and so we very much look forward to on that continuing and growing in the year ahead.

David Kosub: I completely echo that back to the research community, those out there. If you have questions, reach out to us. We're always here to help answer any questions that you might have. Thank you very much, Mike. This has been a great opportunity to hear more about your lookback on 2023 and what's coming up for 2024. I ... It's going to be an exciting year, and I also have to give my kudos to Mr. DeRon Turner. He's always in the background on all of these different things, so ...

Dr. Michael Lauer: Yes. Thank you, DeRon.

David Kosub: Many thanks, and looking forward to seeing how 2024 goes. Thank you very much.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Thank you.