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Dear Members of CNSL (Section on Statistical Consulting),

The 175th Anniversary of the ASA special section of The American Statistician has just been published: The American Statistician I believe that this journal should be accessible online to all ASA members.

The 10th article, "Recent Developments and Their Implications for the Future of Academic Statistical Consulting Centers" (by Eric Vance) discusses the history, current status, and challenges for academic consulting centers, which have been a major component of many statistics departments in the past few decades and is of special relevance to CNSL. 

Let me know if you have any comments on the article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2015.1033990#.VZPzJhNVhBc

Abstract:

I describe how developments over the past 25 years in computing, funding, personnel, purpose, and training have affected academic statistical consulting centers and discuss how these developments and trends point to a range of potential futures. At one extreme, academic statistical consulting centers fail to adapt to competition from other disciplines in an increasingly fragmented market for statistical consulting and spiral downward toward irrelevancy and extinction. At the other extreme, purpose-driven academic statistical consulting centers constantly increase their impact in a virtuous cycle, leading the way toward the profession of statistics having greater positive impact on society. I conclude with actions to take to assure a robust future and increased impact for academic statistical consulting centers.

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Eric Vance
Chair of the ASA Section on Statistical Consulting

Virginia Tech-Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA)
Director and Associate Research Professor
Blacksburg VA, United States
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Dear Eric,

It is a great resource paper for designing academic statistical consulting centers and enhancing the quality of existing consulting centers.  I like the idea of learning and adopting new tools of statistics to solve research problems. In addition, statisticians should also be encouraged to involve more in article review process and serve as editorial board member for applied journals. These adaptions will impact heavily on statistical practices and demand of statisticians.  

With best, 

Alok

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Alok Dwivedi
Assistant Professor
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
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Quoting from Dr. Vance's article:

Funding in inflation-adjusted dollars for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) increased by more than 50% from 1994 to
2014 and nearly doubled in the 10-year period from 1994 to 2003 (Johnson 2013). One notable development was the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program, which resulted in funding for 60 (bio)statistical consulting centers from 2006 to 2012 at medical research universities (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences n.d.).

On the contrary ...

As stated by NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins in a 23 April 2014 interview with USA Today, adjusted for inflation, over the previous 10 years, NIH funding fell 25%. Whereas one in three applications were once funded, in 2014 it was one in six, and final funding per grant has declined significantly. And while CTSA funding added some quarters to the kitty, dollars are needed. As discussed in Nick and O'Brien (2010), this creates substantial challenges for academic statisticians (and, thus, for those who lead collaboratories.

Quoting Dr. Collins:

Particularly for young scientists, they are now beginning to wonder if they are in the wrong field. We have a serious risk of losing the most important resource we have, which is this brain trust, the talent and the creative energies of this generation of scientists.

This includes professional statistical scientists seeking to establish and sustain successful careers in academia.

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Ralph O'Brien
Professor of Biostatistics (officially retired; still keenly active)
Case Western Reserve University
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In the two apparently contrary narratives, the numeric increases and decreases are completely consistent with each other.

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Eric Siegel
Biostatistician
Univ of Arkansas for Medical Sciences of Biostatistics
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In the two apparently contrary narratives, the numeric increases and decreases are completely consistent with each other.

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Eric Siegel
Biostatistician
Univ of Arkansas for Medical Sciences of Biostatistics
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Thanks, Eric, for the fuller, more balanced treatment. I picked on this one aspect of your excellent article in keeping with its title: "Recent Developments and Their Implications for the Future of Academic Statistical Consulting Centers. In short, the positive changes we experienced from 1994 to 2003 belie what has happened recently, what is still happening, and what will likely happen in the foreseeable future.

Let me also note that the NIH's CTSA program subsumed other longstanding NIH programs that supported statistical consulting and related teaching and training in clinical research. While some institutions gained marginal salary support for academic biostatisticians, others had such funding cut significantly. There is probably no practical way to measure the net effect nationwide, but I'd bet that the CTSA program has been part of the problem more than part of the solution.

For today's academic biostatisticians, it's tough out there.

Nuf said--from me, anyway.

-Ralph 

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Ralph O'Brien
Professor of Biostatistics (officially retired; still keenly active)
Case Western Reserve University
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Thanks, Eric, for the fuller, more balanced treatment. I picked on this one aspect of your excellent article in keeping with its title: "Recent Developments and Their Implications for the Future of Academic Statistical Consulting Centers. In short, the positive changes we experienced from 1994 to 2003 belie what has happened recently, what is still happening, and what will likely happen in the foreseeable future.

Let me also note that the NIH's CTSA program subsumed other longstanding NIH programs that supported statistical consulting and related teaching and training in clinical research. While some institutions gained marginal salary support for academic biostatisticians, others had such funding cut significantly. There is probably no practical way to measure the net effect nationwide, but I'd bet that the CTSA program has been part of the problem more than part of the solution.

For today's academic biostatisticians, it's tough out there.

Nuf said--from me, anyway.

-Ralph 

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Ralph O'Brien
Professor of Biostatistics (officially retired; still keenly active)
Case Western Reserve University
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Eric - thanks for sharing this important article.

however, I do wholeheartedly agree with Ralph's important comments as there have been many ongoing discussions about NIH funding having fallen greatly in inflation adjusted dollars. NIH Director Francis Collins in a 2014 address to Congress (Driving Innovation through Federal Investments) stated:

"The fiscal situation for biomedical research in the United States is slowing the momentum of scientific discovery and innovation, and leading some to forgo careers in the biomedical sciences. The past several years have been challenging for us. Since 2003, the NIH has gradually lost purchasing power due to inflation. In 2013, the sequester cut more than $1.5 billion funding for groundbreaking medical research and affected the morale of the scientific community. This resulted in NIH funding 752 fewer grants in FY 2013. Which of these unfunded grants might have prompted a major new insight into Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, or diabetes? Which of these grants that were cut caused the layoff of a promising young student scientist who might have been on the path to win the Nobel someday?"

"Between 1999 and 2009, Asia’s share of worldwide research and development (R&D) expenditures grew from 24 percent to 32 percent, while U.S. R&D expenditures declined from 38 percent to 31 percent.¹¹ The rate of growth of China’s R&D budget is projected to significantly outpace the U.S. R&D budget during the next few years, and by 2022, if the current growth rates hold, China’s R&D funding will surpass that of the United States.¹² The European Commission has urged its member nations to increase their investment in research substantially, recommending budgets of €80 billion ($180 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014-2020, a 40 percent increase over the previous seven-year period.¹³ While we welcome investments by other countries to the global research enterprise, we want to ensure our own role is maintained because the health and economic benefits are so compelling."

¹¹ http://www.unitedformedicalresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Leadership-in-Decline-Assessing-US-International-Competitiveness-in-Biomedical-Research.pdf (PDF - 1.79KB)

¹² http://www.unitedformedicalresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Leadership-in-Decline-Assessing-US-International-Competitiveness-in-Biomedical-Research.pdf (PDF - 1.79KB)

¹³ http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020

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Stuart Gansky, DrPH (biostatistics)
John C. Greene Professor of Primary Care Dentistry
University of California, San Francisco
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