Dean Stuart Shapiro participated in a committee organized by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to address issues surrounding research regulations and policies. The committee's report, “Simplifying Research Regulations and Policies,” examines the challenges faced by academic researchers due to increasing administrative and regulatory requirements.
According to the report, U.S. academic researchers spend more than 40 percent of their federally funded research time on administrative and regulatory matters. This situation has led to concerns about wasted intellectual capacity and taxpayer dollars, as well as fears that excessive regulation may be hindering American scientific competitiveness.
The problem is not new; previous studies have made similar recommendations for improvement with little progress achieved so far. The current effort is motivated by growing global competition in science and technology and a national focus on reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens.
The National Academies convened a committee to conduct an expedited study aimed at identifying ways to improve federal research regulations. The committee examined seven key areas: grant proposals and management, research misconduct, financial conflict of interest in research, protecting research assets (including security, export controls, cybersecurity, data management), research involving biological agents, human subjects research, and research using nonhuman animals.
For each area of regulation reviewed, the committee outlined major problems faced by researchers under current rules. They presented 53 options intended to make compliance less burdensome while maintaining necessary oversight. Each option details its goal, implementation approach, pros and cons—some could be implemented quickly while others would require congressional action.
“By addressing these critical challenges, the committee’s report provides a roadmap for establishing a more agile and resource-effective regulatory framework for federally funded research. Such a framework can liberate researchers from unnecessary administrative tasks, empower them to focus more on conducting research and training the next generation of scientists and engineers, and enable U.S. science and technology to thrive, unencumbered by unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles that rob the nation’s research enterprise of time and money,” states the report.
The committee recommends three guiding principles for future policy decisions: harmonizing regulations across agencies; adopting risk-based approaches that allow flexibility where appropriate; and leveraging technology such as artificial intelligence to simplify compliance processes.
“Although the options outlined in this report will take varying degrees of effort and resources to implement, examples of recent reform success stories could serve as models of implementation and demonstrate the value of embracing new approaches,” according to the committee’s summary.
The report concludes with a call for all stakeholders in U.S. scientific research to engage thoughtfully in reform efforts that balance safety with productivity: “By doing so, the U.S. regulatory enterprise can accomplish its mission of ensuring that federally funded research is safe, is conducted with integrity, maximizes the value of taxpayer dollars, and protects the interests of the public without unnecessarily burdening the U.S. research ecosystem and inhibiting its contributions to national well-being, prosperity, and security.”
