It seems the Trump proposal to simply cut overhead to fifteen percent will not stand up in the courts, at least not without Congressional approval?  Nonetheless a few of you have asked me what I think of the idea.

My preferred reforms for the NIH include the following:

1. Cap pre-specified overhead at 25 percent, down from a range running up to 60 percent.

2. Encourage more coverage of overhead in the proposals themselves, where the researchers are accountable for how the overhead funds are spent.  Severely limit how much the “overhead” cross-subsidizes other university functions, as is currently the case.

3. Fund a greater number of proposals, with the money coming from overhead reductions, as outlined in #1 and #2.

4. Set up a new, fully independent biomedical research arm of the federal government, based on DARPA-like principles.  In fact this was seriously proposed a few years ago, with

Keep reading this article on Marginal Revolution.