Better Than Buffett?

It has been well established that a crisis exists in the biomedical research enterprise of clinical surgery departments: the extinction of the surgeon-scientist. A number of factors, including dwindling research funding, decreasing reimbursement from insurance providers, shrinking salaries for researchers, waning interest in academia among graduating residents, and financial pressures on departments for greater clinical productivity, have contributed to this phenomenon in recent years. 1 More importantly, the growing number of basic scientists who are competing with clinicians for investigator-initiated funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), along with the competitive advantage of clinicians from internal medicine specialties for these funds, has led to fewer awards to surgeons for research funds. 2 The downturn in the United States economy in 2008 has made these issues more pronounced, threatening the viability of many academic medical centers and the research enterprise in many surgical departments.