The agency faced criticism about a month ago from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who said the NIH largely failed to stop sexual harassment at research institutions. Sexual harassment is common in academic science, engineering, and medicine, and more than half of women in academic faculty and staff positions experienced sexual harassment, according to a report released this summer from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
NIH often uses its purse to steer research institutions, including potential termination of grants for failure to follow NIH policies. The agency oversees the second-largest research and development program in the federal government, after the Department of Defense, and has more than $37 billion in its budget, with a $2 billion increase on the horizon for fiscal year 2019.
“The only way we will be able to eradicate sexual harassment is for individuals and institutions to face real consequences, which may mean a genuine threat of losing NIH grants,” DeLauro told Bloomberg Law in a Sept. 17 email. “I would also urge NIH to make the survey assessing workplace climate and harassment a requirement for receiving grant money.”
DeLauro said she appreciated NIH’s recognition that the agency needs to do more and said institutions that have allowed a culture of sexual harassment to thrive must be held accountable. She is the top Democrat on the health appropriations subcommittee that doles out NIH dollars.
Harassment Is Unacceptable: Collins
“Sexual harassment is about power,” NIH Director Francis S. Collins said in a statement announcing new polices to stop sexual harassment. “It’s morally indefensible, it’s unacceptable, and it presents a major obstacle that is keeping women from achieving their rightful place in science.”
NIH will be making announcements in the Federal Register (83 Fed. Reg. 47,634) “in a few days,” and it will be working with the National Science Foundation to ensure funding policies are consistent across the federal government, Collins said in his Sept. 17 statement.
The goal of the announcement is to create a “paradigm shift” wherever NIH research activities take place to eliminate sexual harassment and enhance women’s contributions to scientific advancements. “It is clear we must do more to change the fundamental culture of our organizations.”
Collins stopped short of saying the agency would automatically strip away research grants when the top scientist—also known as the principal investigator—is accused or found guilty of sexual harassment. The concerns are more nuanced, he said, and it is better to find a new principal investigator who can take over a research project.
Universities and academic medical centers are consistently the top recipients of NIH grants. Darrell G. Kirch, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, told Bloomberg Law he applauded the agency’s work to increase transparency and accountability.
“NIH’s efforts to make combating sexual harassment a priority is an important contribution to the ongoing national conversation about this critical issue,” Kirch said in a Sept. 17 email. “Sexual harassment has no place in medical schools, teaching hospitals, or in the biomedical research setting.”
NIH Requires Safe Workplaces
Curbing sexual harassment generally happens through workplace laws, and NIH does not actually employ most of the scientists who get its money. But it does require research institutions to maintain safe work environments.
Collins said the agency is taking steps both as an employer of about 1,100 principal investigators through its intramural program and as a funder of billions of dollars in federal grants. Those intramural initiatives include making it easier to report allegations of harassment and streamlining ways to manage those reports.
But more than 80 percent of NIH’s budget flows to about 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions that actually employ more than 300,000 principal investigators on research grants and their staff. A number of lawmakers and others have questioned why NIH does not automatically terminate funding to all investigators who are accused or found guilty of sexual harassment at the institutions they fund.
Indeed, Murray and DeLauro raised those questions to Collins in their letter last month. House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said this spring federal funding should not support laboratories and institutions where workplace harassment is allowed to continue. “All scientific research is undermined if misconduct is allowed to go unchallenged.”
But Collins said because NIH funding goes to the institutions and not individual scientists, the institutions have a responsibility to develop and implement policies and practices that foster a harassment-free environment.
“We then have the option to suspend or terminate the grant if the proposed alternative arrangements are not acceptable to NIH. However, we often find in those difficult circumstances that working with the institution and approving an alternative principal investigator preserves the science, and allows other personnel working on the grant, including in some cases the victim of harassment, to continue their research.”
Shutting down a research project, instead of transferring the grant to another investigator, could mean laying off as many as 30 research staff who work in that laboratory.
Read more in the Murray/DeLauro letter to NIH, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, NIH Director Collins’ statement on sexual harassment, and the list of NIH awards by location/organization.
Selected information in the "Pharmaceutical Science Update" is compiled from summaries and articles from Bloomberg BNA.