Decline
Massive cuts to federal funding of science research? Not really such a great idea.
For about a decade, stagnant funding at the NIH was considered a serious impediment to scientific progress. Now, scientists say they are facing something much worse.
I asked more than a dozen scientists—across a wide range of disciplines, with affiliations to private schools, public schools, and private foundations—and their concern about the proposed budget was resounding. The consequences of such a dramatic reduction in public spending on science and medicine would be deadly, they told me. More than one person said that losing public funding on this scale would dramatically lower the country’s global scientific standing. One doctor said he believed Trump’s proposal, if passed, would set off a lost generation in American science.
But we’ll have a much much much bigger military than anyone else. That’s all that counts, right? Power, force, strength, violence?
And what happens to all the crucial basic science without billionaire backing—the kind of research with wide-ranging applications that can dramatically enhance human understanding of the world? NIH funding is spread across all disciplines, several scientists reminded me, whereas private funding tends to be driven by the personal preferences of investors.
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[I]n a privately-funded system, investor interest dictates the kind of science that’s pursued in the first place.
“Put simply, privatization will mean that more ‘sexy,’ ‘hot’ science will be funded, and we will miss important discoveries since most breakthroughs are based on years and decades of baby steps,” said Kelly Cosgrove, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University. “The hare will win, the tortoise will lose, and America will not be scientifically great.”
America’s enduring scientific greatness rests largely on the scientists of the future. And relying on private funding poses an additional problem for supporting people early in their careers. The squeeze on public funding in recent years has posed a similar concern, as young scientists are getting a smaller share of key publicly-funded research grants, according to a 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1983, about 18 percent of scientists who received the NIH’s leading research grant were 36 years old or younger. In 2010, just 3 percent of them were. Today, more than twice as many such grants go to scientists who are over 65 years old compared with people under 36—a reversal from just 15 years ago, according to the report.
The proposed NIH cuts “would bring American biomedical science to a halt and forever shut out a generation of young scientists,” said Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “It would take a decade for us to recover and move the world’s center of science to the U.S. from China, Germany, and Singapore, where investments are now robust.”
But we’ll always have college football.
As a (former) scientist it’s hard to articulate just how appalling this is. As for the US military, last time I checked it was bigger than the next 14 military forces combined. The US is the only military in the world that could countenance sustained action on 2-3 different theatres of conflict.
The wealth destruction explicit in this budget is staggering.
Science is one of the things that has been truly great about America in the post-WWII era. Think: Centers for Disease Control, NASA, ARPA (you know: the people who invented that internet thingy), the Human Genome Project — I’m sure a much longer list could be compiled. Agencies, and work, that is respected the world over. Trump wants the USA to be just like him: big, stupid and thuggish.
College football is, uh, very very great for the, uh, scientific mind to, uh, expand. Is that the right word here?
Oh drats, did I meant bask-a-ball? With a stick and a hoop? And the helmet. The helmet.
The US’s leading position in scientific research is what brought me to this country in the first place. I did my postdoctoral training at the NIH, and when I moved on to a faculty position, the recent years of tight budgets were a concern. As the Atlantic reporter notes, the funding lines have been very tight for many years. The leading research grant mentioned is called the R01, and it’s true that the average age of a first R01 awardee has been climbing for years too.
What is not appreciated is that because about 80% of extramural funding is already committed for grants awarded in previous years (the R01 is typically a 4 or 5 year grant, other mechanisms are also often multi-year affairs), so by slashing NIH’s budget so dramatically, it basically means no new grants will be funded and existing grants may even have to be cut.
There are other knock on effects of tighter funding. Every hour I spend writing grant applications is an hour not spent doing actual science or writing up work I’ve already done. I submitted a dozen grant applications last year. I’ll probably submit at least that many or more this year. And I’m one of the lucky ones, my university doesn’t require that I cover any proportion of my salary until I get tenure. Many of my friends are supposed to cover anywhere from 30-75% of their salary within 3 years of being hired. That’s always got the potential to be stressful, but in the current funding climate, it’s actively pushing good researchers out of academia and into the arms of industry. Nothing wrong with industry, but they don’t do a lot of the basic research that underpins each field.
If the NIH is unable to make any new grants over the next few years, it’s hard to overstate what a disaster that is. Private foundations and public charities cannot pick up the slack. Training programs that get cut are hard to restart because the infrastructure and the expertise goes away. And once training programs vanish, the jobs they supplied a trained workforce for has to recruit from other countries. Except if the Trump administration also cuts immigration, then maybe those posts will just go unfilled.
Some people may think that what I and my fellow scientists do is so removed from their everyday life that making our lives harder won’t affect them. I guarantee that it will. It might not be obvious, at least at first. But as the US falls behind in scientific research in all disciplines, a new powerhouse will emerge. And businesses who rely on that basic research for their applied research, may decide it’s easier to just move to whichever country comes out on top.
But as the US falls behind in scientific research in all disciplines, a new powerhouse will emerge.
Oh, I’m sure China will be happy to pick up the slack….
Steve Watson, indeed. In fact US research institutions and Universities are full of talented Chinese researchers who come to the US to study as students and often stay on because they g et meaningful work. No doubt ignorant trump will consider it a feature, rather than a bug, that those people no longer come to the US. I suspect China will happily accept Americans and Europeans seeking research associate positions…
Claire, what sort of time do you spend writing grants? I gave it away when I hit around 25-30%. I enjoyed research, not bureaucracy.
Also, consider Steve Jobs answer as to why Apple didn’t do large scale manufacture in the US any longer. He cited the lack of the type of practically skilled engineers and applied scientists required, saying that they needed literally tens of thousands of them. The US used to be awash with that type of skill. Go a few years with a slashed basic science budget and it will be like that all over again, but if anything even harder to reverse.
Canadians used to hand-wring over the “brain drain”, i.e. bright young scientists and technical people moving south because that’s where all the action (and money) was. Seems like that’s about the reverse. I already heard about Canadian tech firms getting loads of applications from people already in the US, but who hail originally from one of the places Trump thinks you should be scared of, so they’re looking to move someplace less hostile. And I can see American tech firms beefing up their Canadian presence so they can hire those people, and have them travel abroad, without having to deal with arbitrary hassle at the border.
It’s probably around 60% of my time right now. Way too high, I agree, but the hit rate is so low right now and I’m only beginning my second year. My startup will only go so far because genetics, especially human genetics, is expensive.
I could reduce the number of grants I work on but without funds I can’t generate the data I need. Once I actually get a couple grants, I’ll probably be able to dial it back to a more reasonable level.
60%! HF! I sincerely hope you get the extra funding you need in this environment. Fingers and toes crossed for you.
What Claire said.
This happened in the UK too and as far as I’m aware is still happening (I no longer work in academia). The consequence is that teams fall apart, expertise is lost forever and the most promising and important research doesn’t get done.
But of course any scientific breakthroughs that are privately funded will be appropriated by the government.
@Rob Thanks. I’m quite driven so it’s at least partly my own fault. :-)
@latsot That’s why I left the UK in the first place – I read the writing on the wall. Unfortunately, it seems I jumped from the frying pan to the fire.
@zubanel I’m not sure what you mean by this. The government doesn’t typically appropriate research from industry. Why would they? There may be select examples of dual use research, but it’s certainly not the norm.
@Claire: I hear you.
@zubanel: Claire is right, you have it the wrong way around outside science fiction.
In reality there are always complicated agreements between academia, industry and government whenever any academics have the temerity to do actual research.
Academics have to fulfil each part, these days: expert, educator, scapegoat, manager…..
And they are trained for only a few of those things. And they are held accountable for all.
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Holy crap! You mean I haven’t been watching a science fiction all this time? I’ve been waiting for the aliens to show up! I thought it was taking a long time to advance the plot even though something different happens every day. :>)
zubanel, in fact a lot of things end up moving from government to industry; the government funds the research, and industry markets the product. Many of the products we take for granted today were created by and because of military research that was then used for a commercial application by for-profit industries.