National Academies report says growing regulations could harm research

Nature : On 22 September a joint committee of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report about the effect of government regulations on research. Since 1991, funding agencies have instituted 90 regulations, and the number of new regulations imposed each year has risen from 1.5 to 6. The report indicates a wide range of issues that have increased research costs and inefficiency. Some of the problems arise because the different funding agencies often have different regulations covering the same issue, which forces researchers to duplicate their efforts in order to comply. Other regulations, despite being well-intentioned, were instituted in response to single instances of misconduct and may not have resulted in any actual changes beyond the restrictions themselves. The committee has proposed that Congress and the Office of Science and Technology Policy work with funding agencies to reduce redundancy in policies and forms and to establish a research policy board to oversee current policies and implement reforms.