From the Deputy Director for Intramural Research

Science Will Light Our Way in 2025 and Beyond

BY NINA F. SCHOR, DDIR

Happy New Year, everyone! A new year often brings new ideas, new hope, and resolutions for turning over a new leaf. Newness augers change in so many dimensions, and change marks both opportunity and fear. How do we leverage the former and overcome the latter?

Over the course of my post-residency career, I have played many different roles at three different institutions. Each time I moved from one institution to another, although I did so in pursuit and on the promise of a new challenge and a new opportunity, I felt at least as much fear as excitement. I worried about what would happen if I failed, and because each successive institutional home gave me increasingly broad and impactful responsibility, I could not shake the belief that, if I failed, I failed bigger and more impactfully with each move. The key, though, was that I never let that fear become paralytic or grow bigger than my excitement. Opportunity always outweighed trepidation.

In the past several months, I have received many communications from colleagues at NIH and in the extramural world who play many different roles in our vast biomedical community. Some communications were related to seemingly abrupt or arbitrary staffing or policy changes. Others were related to the presidential election. Still others were related to the prospects of universal return-to-the-physical-workplace or Title 42(f) becoming Schedule F or restructuring of the NIH institutes, centers, and workforce. I have been asked why the Scientific Management Review Board has been reconstituted and whether that body will continue to function in the next administration. The truth is that I do not know for certain the answers to any of these questions. But there are several things I do know that make me excited, hopeful, and proud, and each allows me to manage the little bit of fear that comes from the unknown and the prospect of change.

First, I know that no person or people have cornered the market on the need for improved health. This is a human need and, whatever path is chosen to get from here to there, we are all headed for the same target. The road may be bumpy. Some paths may be longer or more twisty than others. We may take stock after walking a mile and have to go back many feet to reconsider and redirect. But no one can discern the path or get to the target without science. We are needed and skilled in a way that brings people together in pursuit of the same goal.

Second, the importance of science and the difference between science and fiction seem now to be more lost on a substantial fraction of our population than in the past. I say “seem” because I am not certain that it is really that different now than in the past. Loud and facile communication may be making it appear that way more than is reality. But in any case, much of science denial and science illiteracy is on us—the biomedical community. Being an educator, a writer, and a public speaker for close to my whole life, I am excited, energized, and passionate about meeting this challenge and I hope you plan to join me! We must be loud about what we do and do not know and seek out what it will take to move the “do nots” to the “do” column. And, yes, I am more than a little scared of what will happen if I fail. But all of you will have my back. Of that, I am certain.

Finally, I know that change is hard for lots of reasons. But introspection and self-evaluation are critical and must happen with regular periodicity. In the universe in which we live, standing still is moving backward. It is healthy and important that we examine critically what we do, how we do it, and where we are going, and that we take action expediently and accordingly to ensure that our path remains on goal and in synch with our priorities and resources.

I am excited to move forward with all of you into 2025 to forge a renewed and new path through science towards greater knowledge, better health, community engagement, and global understanding. Happy New Year!