Abstract: The objective allocation of governmental funds is central to the vitality of the scientific enterprise. In this paper, I suggest that there exists a misalignment between currently used measures to assess a lab’s prior publication history (e.g., journal-impact-factor weighted publication count or JIFCount) and standard practice in financial accounting (e.g., Return on Assets). To examine this disparity, I develop a novel measure I call LabROA that captures the conversion of labor inputs into scientific output, and I operationalize this measure using data from MIT Biology. As predicted by financial accounting, I demonstrate that using JIFCount introduced biases that favor larger labs. Adoption of the LabROA measure would rectify this bias, while simultaneously retaining funding for large, high-performing labs. Lastly, I calculate that use of the LabROA measure would have reallocated more than 14 percent of NIH funding within MIT Biology. Extrapolated to the current NIH budget, which stands at $37 billion, adoption of the LabROA measure to assess laboratory performance could result in a substantive readjustment of the funding landscape.
Speaker: Prof. Chris Liu from Oregon University. https://business.uoregon.edu/faculty/chris-liu
Chris Liu is an associate professor in the Department of Management, an Inman Research Scholar, and coordinator of the management PhD program at the Lundquist College of Business. His expertise includes spatial networks, firm innovation and productivity, and the organization of science. His research has been published in journals including the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, and Science.
Liu received his DBA in technology and operations management from Harvard University, a PhD in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BA in biology from Washington University, St. Louis. Prior to joining the Lundquist College, Liu taught at the University of Toronto. He cofounded PowerTen LLC, a boutique consulting firm headquartered in Turkey, and has also previously worked as a journalist.