Hot Topics: Institutions, Centers, Funding

Blog Posts (15)

March 14, 2018

Ethics of Crowdfunding Higher Education

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

Last week, the faculty at my university were sent an email about an “exciting “new way to fund our projects and research—raise the money ourselves.…

December 13, 2017

BioethicsTV (12/11-13): Confidentiality, Cost, Religious Objection

Chicago Med (Season 3; Episode 4)

Confidentiality: A husband comes into the ER with his wife who is experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions.…

November 1, 2017

Rand Paul is About to Legislate Peer-Review: Scientists Need Not Apply

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

Senator and former Presidential candidate Rand Paul introduced S. 1973, a bill that would change how scientific grant proposals are reviewed.…

October 18, 2017

Structural Injustice of the Academic Conference

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

We have come to that magical time of year again when academic and professional organizations hold their annual meetings.…

January 19, 2017

Peer Reviewing: Paying it Forward

by Kayhan Parsi, JD, PhD and Bela Fishbeyn, MS

As an associate editor and executive editor of the American Journal of Bioethics, we identify and recruit peer reviewers to review manuscripts that have been submitted for publication.…

January 4, 2017

Last Days of the ACA

by Craig M. Klugman, Ph.D.

Politicians are notorious for making campaign promises and then not carrying them out. With the beginning of the 115th Congress, the GOP has doubled-down on its promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”).…

November 9, 2016

President Trump & A Republican Congress: What Might It Mean?

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

In a 2000 episode of The Simpsons, a flash forward shows Lisa being elected the first heterosexual female U.S.…

October 25, 2016

Shooting Galleries: Time To Change Our Drug Policy

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

A hospital in Paris has opened that country’s first “shooting gallery,” a medically supervised facility where drug addicts can use their injection drugs in a safe, clean environment.…

June 16, 2016

Dear Professional Organizations…It’s Not Me, It’s You

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

Dear Professional Organizations,

Being an active member of my profession is important for both my personal mission and my professional career.…

February 29, 2016

A Post-Oscars “Spotlight” on Neonatal Lupus for Rare Disease Day

by Amanda Zink, J.D., M.A. and Jill P. Buyon, M.D.

As national funding decreased in recent decades, medical research suffered. Progress toward uncovering beneficial preventative and therapeutic treatments slowed for thousands of devastating conditions, affecting the health, happiness, and life expectancy of millions of Americans.…

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Published Articles (2)

AJOB Primary Research: Volume 8 Issue 2 - Apr 2017

Growing an ethics consultation service: A longitudinal study examining two decades of practice Christine Gorka, Jana M. Craig & Bethany J. Spielman

AJOB Primary Research: Volume 7 Issue 3 - Jul 2016

Improving third-year medical students' competency in clinical moral reasoning: Two interventions Paul J. Cummins, Katherine J. Mendis, Robert Fallar, Amanda Favia, Lily Frank, Carolyn Plunkett, Nada Gligorov & Rosamond Rhodes

News (37)

April 11, 2018 3:00 am

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Precertification Pilot Program for Digital Health Software: Weighing the Benefits and Risks (Annals of Internal Medicine)

In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a new program for software classified as a medical device. The Digital Health Software Precertification (Pre-Cert) Program is designed to expedite regulatory review for companies that demonstrate quality and organizational excellence in software development. Although Pre-Cert is intended to promote the worthy goals of access and innovation in digital health, many questions have been raised. In particular, Pre-Cert may reduce incentives for developers to study the safety and effectiveness of their software products before patients start to rely on them. Although postmarket surveillance can mitigate risks of these products, the FDA does not have as much authority after a product’s widespread use to enforce data collection deadlines. Pre-Cert may also create confusion for patients and physicians, who may believe that marketed products were subject to rigorous study.

December 27, 2017 9:00 am

Major initiative seeks to combat U.S. soldiers’ weight problems and injuries (Washington Post)

These base makeovers are setting the scene for the launch of Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F), a larger initiative — a decade in the making and still pending final approval — that strives to radically change how the Army prepares service members. The proposal includes the introduction of a new field manual for training, plus the creation of Soldier Performance Readiness Centers (SPRC, pronounced “spark”), which will be state-of-the-art fitness facilities staffed by experts who can educate and offer real-time feedback on proper form, psychological well-being, nutrition and more.

December 18, 2017 9:00 am

Researchers win some, lose some in final U.S. tax bill (Science)

The U.S. research community experienced both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in lobbying congressional Republicans as they wrapped up a major overhaul of the nation’s tax code.

June 1, 2017 9:00 am

NIH scales back plan to curb support for big labs after hearing concerns (Science)

Faced with a barrage of criticism, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has scaled back a plan to cap its support for individual labs in order to free up funds for more scientists.

May 9, 2017 9:00 am

French plan to create €5-billion science ‘super-campus’ in disarray (Nature)

French ambitions to create a €5-billion (US$5.5-billion) science ‘super-campus’ near Paris by 2020 seem to be in falling further apart, after a compromise scheme to save the troubled project was rejected by one of its creators.

May 4, 2017 9:00 am

NIH to limit the amount of grant money a scientist can receive (Nature)

For the first time, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will restrict the amount of funding that an individual scientist can hold at any one time, based on a new point system. The move, announced on 2 May, is part of an ongoing effort to make obtaining grants easier for early and mid-career scientists, who face much tougher odds than their more-experienced colleagues.

May 2, 2017 9:00 am

$10 million settlement over alleged misconduct in Boston heart stem cell lab (Science)

A research misconduct investigation of a prominent stem cell lab by the Harvard University–affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston has led to a massive settlement with the U.S. government over allegations of fraudulently obtained federal grants. As Retraction Watch reports, BWH and its parent health care system have agreed to pay $10 million to resolve allegations that former BWH cardiac stem cell scientist Piero Anversa and former lab members Annarosa Leri and Jan Kajstura relied on manipulated and fabricated data in grant applications submitted to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

March 30, 2017 9:00 am

Gates Foundation announces open-access publishing venture (Nature)

One of the world’s wealthiest charities, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, is set to launch its own open-access publishing venture later this year. The initiative, Gates Open Research, was announced on 23 March and will be modelled on a service begun last year by the London-based biomedical charity, the Wellcome Trust. Like that effort, the Gates Foundation’s platform is intended to accelerate the publication of articles and data from research funded by the charity.

March 21, 2017 9:00 am

Federal advisory panels agree Opana's risks outweigh benefits (USA Today)

The new extended-release version of Endo Pharmaceuticals’ Opana may even be more dangerous than the version it replaced, according to critics including the advocacy group Public Citizen. Two Food and Drug Administration advisory panels seemed to agree, voting 18 to 8 that it presents more risks than benefits to society. Next it’s up to the FDA to decide whether to act on the panels’ advice, which it generally does. Possible actions include changes to labels, restriction of prescriptions and an outright ban.

February 27, 2017 9:00 am

U.S. researchers guilty of misconduct later won more than $100 million in NIH grants, study finds (Science)

Overall, 23 of the scientists (roughly 8% of sanctioned researchers) received NIH funding after receiving an ORI sanction. Of that group, 17 researchers won more than $101 million for 61 new projects. Thirteen continued to receive funding from NIH grants that had been awarded before being sanctioned.

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