gram project or center grants awarded. Such 

 grants provide aggregate support to teams of sci- 

 entists and make it possible to organize, at a med- 

 ical school or university, combinations of indivi- 

 dual and group projects especially designed to 

 optimize efforts on a particular research area or 

 problem. 



Definition of Basic Research 



The R&D activities carried out by these intra- 

 mural and extramural organizations are generally 

 conceptualized into three major categories — basic 

 research, applied research, and technological de- 

 velopment. 



• Basic research is concerned primarily with 

 gaining a fuller knowledge or understanding 

 of the subject under study. It is a long-range 

 quest to augment the underlying conceptual 

 structure in a research area. 



• Applied research in both the laboratory and 

 clinical setting is aimed at obtaining specific 

 knowledge that will enable the investigator to 

 judge whether it is feasible to produce a new 

 or improved way — that is, technology — of 

 preventing, diagnosing, or treating a particu- 

 lar malfunction. Applied research cannot 

 take place without a relevant scientific base; 

 it is "targeted" to determine whether, with 

 the current knowledge base, a means can be 

 devised to accomplish a specific practical 

 task. 



• Technological development at NIH is primar- 

 ily concerned with clinical applications and 

 draws on the findings and hypotheses 

 reached in applied research in order to create 

 a specific new or substantially improved ap- 

 proach to meeting a definite preventive or 

 health care need in the community or physi- 

 cian-patient setting. 



Although these conceptual distinctions can be 

 made, it must be noted that basic and applied re- 

 search form a continuum, and a specific research 

 project may be basic from one point of view and 

 applied from another. This fact makes it difficult 

 and in some cases meaningless to classify indivi- 

 dual projects as either basic or applied; it is usual- 

 ly more meaningful to speak of research as having 

 basic and applied aspects. 



Role of Basic Research 



NIH supports basic research to expand knowl- 

 edge and understanding of the properties of the 



96 HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE 



fundamental life processes and of the ways in 

 which disease and impairment may result from 

 such factors as genetic defects, infection, envi- 

 ronmental pollution, unhealthy lifestyle, and the 

 aging process. This understanding is a prerequisite 

 for identifying new possibilities of prevention and 

 intervention. As summarized by the President's 

 Biomedical Research Panel Report, basic or fun- 

 damental research in biomedical science provides: 

 . . .the science base upon which to build im- 

 proved technologies for the prevention and cure 

 of diseases. Before there can be intelligently 

 conducted applied research, before there can be 

 demonstrations or clinical trials, or before there 

 can be public dissemination of techniques, 

 there must be enough productive basic research 

 to provide the fundamental science from which 

 these efforts flow.' 

 The Panel concluded that a "vigorous program of 

 fundamental research in all Institutes is essential 

 to the continuing strength of the biomedical re- 

 search effort. "- 



The goal in an NIH basic research program is 

 to achieve, over time, the general expansion of 

 the base of scientific knowledge across a wide 

 front. The outcome and immediate applicability of 

 any particular basic research project is often un- 

 certain since the scientist deals with such a large 

 element of the unknown; therefore, a broad ap- 

 proach is essential. With opportunities always 

 more numerous than resources, it is possible at any 

 given time only to press those scientific possibili- 

 ties that are judged most promising. An opportu- 

 nity is promising when the question posed in the 

 project is of high importance to the needs of an 

 NIH program, when the available technology is 

 adequate to make the scientific area ripe for fur- 

 ther exploration, and when the investigator is 

 considered highly competent. 



The focus on basic research at NIH can be 

 measured by the dollar support devoted to it in 

 recent years. Basic research has enjoyed consider- 

 able increase in support as part of the general in- 

 crease in the NIH R&D budget from 1957 to 1975 

 (Figure I). The dollars for basic research have 

 increased from about $37 million to more than 

 half a billion dollars during this period. The rela- 

 tive proportion of basic research, however, has 

 fluctuated. It increased from around 29 percent in 

 1957 to a high of 38 percent in the mid-sixties, 

 and then returned to the earlier level — about 28 

 percent — in 1975. 



In addition, inflation has eroded the amount of 

 actual research that can be purchased (Figure 1). 



'Report of the President's Hiomedicnl Rese:trch Panel. U.S. 

 Departmenl of Health. Rducation and Welfare. DHKW Publi- 

 cation No. (OS) l(^-m^. 1976, p. 5. 

 -Ibid., p. 6. 



