Search Results: AI
Controversial Research Security Legislation Could Move Forward in COVID-19 Relief Package
The Senate has incorporated the Safeguarding American Innovation Act (S. 3997) into the HEALS Act, the Republican-led Senate version of a new COVID-19 economic relief package (see related article). The Safeguarding American Innovation Act, sponsored by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE), is sweeping legislation that aims to tighten the security of the U.S. research enterprise against competing governments, most notably the Chinese government, by imposing restrictions on collaborating with foreign entities. However, the bill has been criticized by many in the research community for being too restrictive and for potentially discouraging foreign scientists from working in the…
Census Announces Early End to 2020 Operations, Jeopardizing Accuracy of the Count
Census Bureau Director Stephen Dillingham announced that the Census Bureau will cut short its counting operations for the 2020 Census by a full month in order to produce apportionment counts by its legally mandated deadline of December 31, 2020. According to the announcement, the Census Bureau will end field data and self-response collection on September 30, rather than October 31 as previously planned. This change comes months after the Census Bureau itself asked Congress to delay the deadline for producing apportionment counts in order to allow more time to recover from the delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the…
NIDA Seeking Comments on 2021-2025 Strategic Plan
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking stakeholder feedback on the draft version of its upcoming 2021-2025 Strategic Plan. The strategic plan is intended to guide the agency’s research priorities for the next five years by outlining cross-cutting research topics and approaches. NIDA’s draft strategic plan highlights several research topics that are relevant to the social and behavioral science community, including: Identifying and developing approaches to reduce stigma, Identifying and developing approaches to reduce health disparities, Understanding differences based on sex and gender, and Understanding interactions between substance use, HIV, and…
Research Applications Increase in Wake of COVID-19 Shutdowns, NIH Finds
A recent blog post from Mike Lauer, Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), highlights how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected extramural research applications at NIH and how application rates compare to previous years. According to data collected by NIH, the number of R01-equivalent applications received by NIH between May 1 and June 5 of 2020 was 10 percent higher than the same period in 2019. The data also reflects more than a 10 percent increase of applications across all research project grants between 2020 and 2019. In addition to the spike in applications…
SEAN Releases New Guidance on Protective Behaviors to Stem COVID-19
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN) (see COSSA’s previous coverage) has released a new rapid expert consultation, Encouraging Adoption of Protective Behaviors to Mitigate the Spread of COVID-19. The guidance, which draws on research from communication, social psychology, and behavioral economics as well as lessons learned from successful public health campaigns such as tobacco prevention and seatbelt use, offers a set of strategies to make adoption of preventive behaviors more likely as well as risk communication strategies. It is available both as a short infographic and as a more detailed report. Back to…
National Academies Launch Study on COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has launched a fast-track study to develop a framework for planning the equitable distribution of vaccines against COVID-19. The study, which is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is responsible for producing a consensus report that considers the following questions: “What criteria should be used in setting priorities for equitable allocation of vaccine? How should the criteria be applied in determining the first tier of vaccine recipients? As more vaccine becomes available, what populations should be added successively to the priority…
AAAS Issues Draft Plan to Address Systemic Racism in the Sciences
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has released the first of three draft plans intended to address systemic racism in the sciences, Holding up a Mirror: Demographic Representation in AAAS Functions that Advance Careers. The plan outlines AAAS’s commitment and proposed actions to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion within its operations. Forthcoming draft plans will focus on AAAS programs and initiatives to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in science and engineering and on AAAS actions to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion with the AAAS as an organization. They are expected to be released by mid-September. Comments and…
House Appropriations Committee Approves FY 2021 Funding Bills
During the week of July 13, the House Appropriations Committee completed its marathon markups of its 12 annual appropriations bills for fiscal year (FY) 2021, making way for consideration by the full House of Representatives; the relevant subcommittees advanced their respective measures the week prior. Despite the semblance of “regular order,” the outlook for final FY 2021 spending bills is still very much up in the air as lawmakers continue to grapple with pandemic relief negotiations and as the November elections approach. In addition, the House bills—which were written by the Democrats—include several funding and policy provisions that will be…
House Budget Committee Holds Hearing on Federal R&D Spending
On July 8, the House Committee on the Budget held a hearing focused on the federal role in research and development (R&D) in fueling American innovation and recovery in light of the effort to combat the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Committee heard testimony from several experts on the research and development enterprise including CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Sudip Parikh, Professor at New York University Paul Romer, President and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness Deborah Wince-Smith, and Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School Willy Shih. The Committee questioned…
HHS Bypasses CDC in COVID-19 Data Collection, Sparking Concerns
On July 10, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released new guidance that instructed hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in reporting COVID-19 data and instead send the information directly to the Department through a relatively new system called HHS Protect. The change has raised concerns among many public health and science stakeholder groups that it could signal an effort to sideline the CDC in responding to the pandemic and to limit the data available to the public. Prior to the change, hospitals submitted COVID-19 information to the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network…
NIH Releases Agency-Wide Strategic Plan for COVID-19 Research
On July 13, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released an agency-wide strategic plan on how NIH intends to direct research in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan is intended to provide a framework of new research programs and repurposing of existing programs that would assist in mobilizing the research community in developing treatments, prevention methods, and vaccines. The strategic plan cites five overarching priorities for NIH in responding to COVID-19: Improve fundamental knowledge of COVID-19 disease progression, outcomes, and recovery. Advance research to improve detection by developing and validating new assays and retooling existing diagnostic platforms. Support research…
NIMHD Funding Research on Digital Interventions to COVID-19
The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) within the National Institutes of Health has released a funding opportunity seeking research applications on digital healthcare practices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding announcement cites the primary focus of the research to be the role of digital health interventions like telehealth, mobile health, health information technology, and wearable devices in addressing health disparities that may be caused or exacerbated by the pandemic. Applications will be accepted through August 20, 2020. More information is available on the NIH website. Back to this issue’s table of contents.
APA Seeks Nominations for Climate Change Task Force
The American Psychological Association (APA), a COSSA governing member, has announced the opening of nominations for individuals to serve on a new APA Task Force on Climate Change. The task force, which was authorized by APA’s Council of Representatives in February 2020 as part of a greater APA policy resolution responding to climate change, will focus on how the academic discipline of psychology can better address climate change and will produce a report to be shared publicly. Nominees should be willing to self-nominate and be able to serve a full year on the task force. Nominations will be accepted through…
Federal Research Agencies Release Guidance on OMB’s Administrative Flexibility Changes
In response to a June 18 memo (M 20-26) issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) extending certain administrative flexibilities to federal grant recipients as relief for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, federal research agencies have released guidance statements clarifying the memo’s implications for recipients of research grants. On June 25, both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) released nearly identical sets of guidance in response to the OMB memo explaining how the changes to the flexibilities will specifically affect recipients of their grants. The flexibilities include an allowance to continue…
Funding for DOD Social Science Research Restored in House and Senate Defense Authorization Bills
Both the House and Senate’s drafts of the annual authorization bill for the Department of Defense (DOD), the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), include language preventing the elimination of funding for DOD’s basic social science research program, the Minerva Research Initiative, as proposed in the Administration’s budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2021. Both bills propose a total of $17 million in the Defense-Wide funding line for the Minerva initiative, which if enacted would be a sizeable increase over the $11.4 million the program received in FY 2020. While the Minerva Initiative receives some funding from the Navy and Air…
RISE Act Would Provide Relief Funding for Federally Funded Scientists
On June 24, Representatives Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Fred Upton (R-MI) introduced the Research Investment to Spark the Economy (RISE) Act (H.R. 7308), which would authorize $26 billion in relief funding for federal science agencies to support researchers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The funds could be used to enable graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and Principal Investigators to complete work that was disrupted by COVID-19, or extend the training or employment of researchers on an existing research project for up to two years because of the disruption of the job market. The bill follows a similar Dear Colleague Letter led…
House Committee Releases Climate Policy Report, Recommends Strengthening of Research Enterprise
On June 30, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis majority staff released the report Solving the Climate Crisis: The Congressional Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a Healthy, Resilient, and Just America, a sweeping set of policy recommendations to address and combat climate change. The report recommends several initiatives to be taken by the U.S. government that would expand the federal science and technology sector’s ability to address climate change, including strengthening the research enterprise. Some of the recommendations that are relevant to the social and behavioral science research enterprise include: Expanding and sustaining funding for…
Census Releases Updated Demonstration Data Products
The Census Bureau has released a new set of demonstration data products that show how its new disclosure avoidance strategy (DAS) will impact the quality of its 2020 Census data products (see previous coverage). The Census Bureau is releasing a set of benchmark metrics to track the impact of the ongoing development and improvements to its privacy-protecting algorithm on data accuracy. These metrics will be updated every six weeks so data users can track the ongoing improvements Bureau staff are making to the algorithm. In addition, the Census Bureau has released a set of privacy-protected microdata files (PPMF) to allow…