Biomedical Innovation
April 9, 2011
Over and over during the brouhaha about A2s and multiple-R01 PIs, this old saw has been brandished:
Innovation is, and always was, higher in smaller/younger labs[.]
There is never any fucken evidence marshalled in support of this claim.
Comradde RisottoProffe 
April 9, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Perhaps that comment was a sweeping generalization. I think the more important point was that a lot of new faculty can’t get out of the starting gate without funding. It’s true that a lot of people are leaving the country (at least from my narrow circle), or leaving science altogether.
Figure 1 in Rocky’s blog post is meaningless. I’d like to see the distribution of dollar amounts to PI’s. Figure 2 suggests that a large proportion of the NIH budget is being held by a few investigators, with numbers of people holding 3+ grants rising steeply since 1986.
April 10, 2011 at 11:24 am
“There is never any fucken evidence marshalled in support of this claim.”
Or that one.