NIH funding was doubled from 1998 to 2003, but then the rate of increase dropped to zero, and in fact has not kept pace with inflation. The rapid increase caused problems, and the failure to continue the increase has caused problems.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Beryl Lieff Benderly
13 July 2007
Between 1998 and 2003, the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) rose from $13 billion to more than $27 billion in a plan known as "the doubling.” Now that the tsunami of cash has receded, many life scientists--especially those in the early phase of their careers--have found conditions no better, and in some ways worse, than before the process began...
The NIH doubling did do a lot of good, providing billions of dollars for basic and clinical research and establishing a new, much higher baseline for funding. Still, “both the way Congress has expanded the NIH budget and the way NIH has made use of its new funds offer important cautionary lessons,” writes Yuval Levin, a former associate director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, in an article in The New Atlantis. He writes that the infusion of money was “far too rapid, and not adequately tied to structural reforms that might enable NIH to best make use of its growing resources.” Fifteen percent hikes for each of 5 years “built expectations and momentum that set the agency up for disappointment when the doubling was done,” he writes...
...“The glut of graduate students enticed by the growing support a few years ago have since found it difficult to get their own work funded … and the sudden deceleration in funding has left many researchers feeling slighted even though their funding grew by leaps and bounds in the past decade.”
I can't help but notice that the funding leveled off the same year that the Iraq War started.
Comments
My lab calculated that if we took the money that went towards the Iraq war, and put it towards the NIH instead, we could fund the NIH for something like 300 years (or some absurd number like that).
Posted by: ERV | July 13, 2007 1:08 PM
"I can't help but notice that the funding leveled off the same year that the Iraq War started."
During the Clinton years, the plan was made to double the NIH budget, and the increase was begun. The doubling was completed during the Bush years, so the rapid increase stopped. It seems a bit of a stretch to correlate a budget plan made in the Clinton years with the Iraq war.
Of course, there is a larger issue of funding priorities, and an administration with different priorities wouldn't have basically frozen the funding level once the planned rapid increase was over, but that period of rapid change was always supposed to end.
Posted by: Colst | July 13, 2007 1:37 PM
If the plan to double the NIH budget was carved out in 1998 and ran it's course and stopped in 2003, then what explains the grant claw-backs that have been happening in 2006 and 2007, where the last year of a research grant is being completely cut and others are seeing 25% cuts?
The above graph indicates that funding has become static since 2004. If there are now clawbacks, then has the NIH been awarding more in grants than their budget has allowed?
Posted by: Joe Blough | July 13, 2007 1:50 PM
Since NIHM won't give us money to generate our data, that means we get to generate it by any means necessary! (Funny how if I run my random number generator 20 times, I finally get results at p=0.05...)
Posted by: Garrett | July 13, 2007 2:03 PM
Joe, there are many factors, here are only a few. grants are awarded for up to 5 yrs, NIH is supposed to average 4yrs overall. so there was some degree of bad planning for the cessation of the "doubling", they should have started pulling back in the last few years to account for future commitments. second, the number of applications is skyrocketing and the NIH likes to keeps metrics like percent funded and overall numbers of grants up. one way to do this is to pare back budgets. third, the real purchasing power of a dollar of science funding keeps dropping.
there's a request for comment out from the NIH, see details here. everyone, go to the NIH comment site and give your two cents.
Posted by: Drugmonkey | July 13, 2007 3:45 PM
Another problem was that the growth years spurred a building boom in a lot of medical schools. In effect, demand expanded to consume the available supply of research dollars.
The people I feel worst for are the faculty hired in the 2001-2002 period, who are now approaching tenure at a time when getting new grant funding is incredibly difficult.
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | July 13, 2007 3:52 PM
All true. And there is even one more thing to consider. Money is being diverted from grant-based research to develping the "roadmap". So it's not just flat, but decreasing if you consider that pathetic waste of money.
The security budget for the NIH campus is also apparently taking some huge chunk out of the intramural budget. Something like 10% I hear, just so they can surround the damn campus with a big fence and security guards.
It's all propaganda.
Posted by: MarkH | July 13, 2007 9:50 PM