Kevin Vranes has a phud in Physical Ocean- ography and Cli- matology. He now studies sci- ence policy and politics at the In studying science policy, one of the most pathetic things I encounter is the whining about money by researchers. Way back in the early NoSeNada days (was that really only a few months ago?), I wrote about well-known physicist Lawrence Krauss whining about "drastic budget threats" in basic physics funding. As I showed, those "drastic threats" don't exist, but the funding reality didn't stop Krauss and others from pleading for more from Congressional appropriators.
Lately it's been the biomedical community playing their own misinformed crying game. They've clearly become spoiled by an incredibly rapid rise in funding, including a doubling of NIH's budget from 1990 to 1999 and a 50% increase from 2000 to 2003. People relying on NIH largess and related funding have apparently come to feel entitled to massive annual budget increases.
The editor-in-chief of the Journal of Clinical Investigation is the latest to fall into the "poor us, sniffle, sniffle" funding blunder (link). Andrew R. Marks, in an editorial titled "Rescuing the NIH before it is too late" actually has the cojones to write:
Dr. Zerhouni's [Director of NIH] apparent lack of understanding of how science is done is compounded by the utter lack of support for biomedical science from the White House and Congress. Neither Democrats nor Republicans appear to understand the key role of science in the nation's health, welfare, and economy. The White House under George W. Bush is targeting the NIH for destruction.
To which my body responded, suddenly and involuntarily, by spitting my coffee all over my computer screen and screaming WHA-WHA-WHAAAT?
"Utter lack of support" and "targeting for destruction"?? That's incredibly strong language for such an ignorant position.
You can play with the numbers yourself here, but this is what you need to know: In 1980, the NIH budget was a bit over $7B in 2005 dollars. Now it is $28.5B. In constant dollars, that's a quadrupling of the biomedical budget in 25 years. During the Bush Administration NIH has jumped from $22.4B (2005 dollars) to $28.5B, an increase of 27%, with - as I said above - a 50% increase between 2000 and 2003. Utter lack of support?
The NIH FY07 budget request is flat from FY06 appropriations. It is possible that this flat request signals an "utter lack of support" and being "targeted for destruction" to some -- but only to those too lazy to look at the entire funding picture. I know some people can't accept that we really do have a "scarce resources" problem and that we have a huge federal funding portfolio that must be managed, finessed and jigsawed to fit an almost unlimited array of problems and priorities. But the federal government does have a lot to cover and NIH is only one piece of this picture. Even amid this reality, NIH has been doing extremely well compared to other R&D programs. These two graphs should give plenty of perspective on the broad funding picture:
The second graph clearly shows that while non-defense R&D has been essentially flat for the past two decades, NIH's budget has gone up up up up up up up.
And oh, by the way, while NIH is getting a flat FY07 funding request,
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NASA's request is for a 1% increase, most of that going to exploration
NOAA's request is for a 5.8% decrease
NIST's request is for a 22% decrease
DOE is also flat funded
NSF is doing better, with a 7.8% requested increase
the entire R&D portfolio is decreasing, which means NIH is doing better than the market
I can only guess that Marks (and a lot of others) is bitching now because the past two years have seen a leveling off of the NIH budget that has been an extraordinarily long time in coming. NIH has seen the sort of budget ballooning that people outside of defense-related fields can only dream of.
Here's what I think happens: Somebody close to the policy world in a certain field sends out a "we're not getting the love" email. A few others jump on and maybe write their own versions of the same email or a blog post. Then the field researchers who never look at budget numbers or science policy, and generally couldn't care less about prioritizations or the inner machinations of the Beltway budget zoo, jump on the same bandwagon. "We're getting hammered!!" they scream.
If this means you, please please please look at the numbers before you let the tears fly!
Comments
# 1 | revere | April 10, 2006 1:14 PM
Kevin: I am not sure why you say I don't accept we have a scarce resources problem. I didn't discuss that at the link you provide. What I said was that Congress doesn't make decisions solely (or even principally) on the basis of rational choices, optimizing some function or enlarging the common good. They make decisions for all sorts of reasons in a complicated mix. You and I have both seen how the sausage is made, although I've seen it through many more adminsitrations and congresses than you have.
Yes, NIH budgets got bumped up a lot. It became a politically attractive thing to do. It is now being squeezed badly by the 800 pound war gorilla. This is a particularly serious problem for scientists on grants as there is a several year period as funding moves through the pipeline -- the pig in the python phenomenon. When I am awarded a grant that gets cut 35% in Year 3, it hurts quite a lot. Things have started, technicians and research assistants hired, data partially collected and much of that has to stop.
You can look at the numbers and come up with conclusions based soley on the numbers. That's bad science policy but common unfortunately. In the real life of science (not science policy and not Senate staffing) it isn't just a matter of those numbers. I am also surprised at your complaint about scientists acting like an interest group. What do you expect?
# 2 | Kevin Vranes | April 10, 2006 1:47 PM
Revere - thanks for the comment. I must have read your post wrong, then, and sorry if I did! In the context of the discussion -- bird flu -- I took the balance of the back-and-forth and then your post to mean 'yes there are priorities, but this deserves special consideration.' Or, as you said: "This can give rise to genuine dilemmas. But bird flu isn't one of them. ... And that is a public policy emergency."
Which misses my point: everybody with a problem can say the same thing and make a damn compelling case for their issue. We could go in endless circles, with me saying "we have lots of problems" and somebody else saying "yea, but this problem is really the biggest one."
I also took this:
"It is the old "scarce resources" problem, competing needs, etc."
and the words following that served to diminish the "scarce resources" problem as an attitude that 'we might have a scarce resources problem, but that problem doesn't apply here.' And if that is your attitude (and it may not be, but that's how I took it), then it indicates to me that you really don't believe we have a scarce resources issue.
On the other points: I'm not arguing that NIH or the broad R&D portfolio doesn't deserve all the coin that DoD is getting for Iraq. That's beside the point. Point is, a funding portfolio has been worked out by the WH and Congress that balances perceived needs. If we don't like the balance, we need to elect a different Congress.
But within the R&D balance, NIH is doing nicely and has been for a very long time. That's not looking simply looking at the numbers, it's looking at broad funding history on R&D and Congressional attitudes on the funding balance. For a great many non-health researchers, including people who think climate change, ecosystem destruction, environmental health, etc. are great threats, the 800-lb gorilla is NIH, not the Iraq war. (I'm not on either side, FWIW -- just watching.) You're not the only researcher seeing grants cut in mid-stream!
Also, what I wrote in a post so long ago is:
"Policymaking is a system of taking in expert information from many quarters and coming up with the most tractable solution, which primarily must be politically tenable, if not practically and scientifically tenable (in that order)."
That's far from your interpretation:
"Kevin's version is of rational people beseiged by conflicting and competing demands. What's a poor CongressThing to do?"
I said "primarily must be politically tenable" for a reason -- I'm well aware of the complicated mix politics involved.
# 3 | RPM![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/nosenada/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 10, 2006 4:59 PM
I have to feel that some of this is inspired by Orac, Alex, and my tracking of the NIH budget ammendments. Allow me to say I am currently not supported by, nor have I ever been supported by, an NIH grant. I do, however, acknowledge that I have been indirectly supported NIH funds either through my graduate program/department or professional societies. I can definitely see myself applying for NIH funding in the future, as well.
That said, I was merely looking out for my best interests in encouraging people to petition their representatives to increase the NIH budget. I was not saying that the NIH budget deserves to be increased more than any other governmental funding agency. As a beneficiary of NSF funds, I am glad to see their budget increasing, and I would defend/push for an ammendment to increase that budget.
# 4 | Kevin Vranes | April 10, 2006 6:47 PM
You're off the hook, RPM, even if you do hate the Giants. Writing letters to reps is a time-honored tradition from every corner of the supplicant universe, whether it be asking for bridges to nowhere or particle accelerators. I expect every interest group to ask for money. What I don't expect (and I don't think you did, although I may have missed a post or two) is the ignorance that Marks and others display in saying that there is no support for NIH or science in general, and that NIH is getting hit at the expense of other programs, etc.
You guys should realize, though, that every professional society puts out "Support funding for _____ !!" emails and they are always based on advocacy for more money for researchers, not on some highly principled idea of national need. (You should see some of the stuff that the American Geological Institute puts out there with a straight face, like asking for more money to support mineral mining activities.) Point is, it's lobbying -- no better or worse than asking for bridges, a new post office or a library named after a dignitary. That the Spector-Harkin amdt is any more worthy than the other 500,000 requests made of Congress seems obvious to you guys, but not so clear to the space exploration guys. But again: advocating for more money -- fine. Saying there is an utter lack of support for NIH -- ridiculous.
# 5 | revere | April 10, 2006 9:51 PM
Kevin: Resources are not infinite nor are they even oversized. But to say they are rationally established in our society is to be blind to the many forces that distort rationality in distributing resources. I am supported both by NIH and by NSF and I see the problem that the non-health folks have. In the 20th century the premier science was physics (especially high energy particle physics), but by the last third biology became ascendant and now rules the roost. It is a very expensive science, however, and comparing expenditures at NIH with NSF is not proper. I know the world of mathematics funding (because I have some) and the amounts there for perfectly good grants are dwarfed by the average biomedical research grant. For the record I also direct a large multimillion dollar biomedical research program and have been getting grants for almost 40 years so I've seen the changes.
I also know a bit about "educating" Congress about the needs of science and how earmarks distort peer review. And most of those earmarks are not in the biological sciences (although some are). I didn't say (nor do I agree) with the proposition you were inveighing against -- that there is utter lack of support for NIH. In that we agree, although currently there isn't much support at the moment because of competing military needs. But I think you over reacted to the statement and don't fully appreciate the difficulty that ensues when you cut funding for biomedical science in the US. The conveyor belt is running very fast so if you slow it by 1% an awful lot of stuff drops off.
# 6 | Kevin Vranes | April 11, 2006 12:41 AM
Again, who is saying anything about rationality? You're incorrectly interpretting my words -- I haven't argued anywhere that funding allocation on the federal level is a rational process. The "managed, finessed and jigsawed [budget] to fit an almost unlimited array of problems and priorities" is art, not science. There is a mysterious confluence of both, though. Have you read Kingdon?
Second, I'm not comparing NIH to NSF. (For FY07 NSF got a 8% request increase.) I'm comparing NIH to non-defense R&D across the board, which includes all those groups in the first graph. Biomedicine is inherently more expensive than nuclear energy research, than ship time for the polar fleet, for weather satelites, or for Earthscope? I'd welcome some sources that discuss cost vs. outcome in R&D funding.
"I didn't say (nor do I agree) with the proposition you were inveighing against -- that there is utter lack of support for NIH."
OK - and that was the point of the post, after all. 8-)
"The conveyor belt is running very fast so if you slow it by 1% an awful lot of stuff drops off."
Ok, but that's not a rational way to go about making policy, is it? (I assume from your mention of rationality a few times that you wish it would be a more rational decision-making process ... maybe I'm wrong?) Let's say the same thing from a desk-bound Colonel: Well, we've rapidly built up this battlefield tank program and now we have other programs competing with it so we should cut it. But we're not going to because then our 40mm shell technology program will be thrown off, and Joe in maintenance will be laid off, and all the other battlefield equipment programs we've built up lately will suffer. Sure, what we really need is HUMINT, but screw it.
Finally, I think you have to be careful in implying that NIH and/or non-defense R&D is suffering because of war approps. All approps for Iraq and Afghanistan have been supplemental and non-offset. To say that R&D would be getting that money if Iraq wasn't -- and thus to say that Congress/WH would be willing to go into the red in order to fund R&D -- is speculative.
# 7 | Stacey | March 11, 2007 2:58 AM
Though this post is old, I feel as an up-and-coming graduate student in the biological sciences should put in her two cents (even if it doesn't get read).
Yes, the budget went through the roof a decade or so ago, and yes, most people realize doubling or quadrupuling the budget now or soon would be completely unnecessary, but there are a few things one must keep in mind. As mentioned by revere, several people now depend on these funds as a means of running their labs or paying their students etc., and to yank that from underneath them is not going to fix anything. Secondly, the value and contribution of research to humanity as a whole that have been made possible through the funds alotted by programs [like the NIH] is immense. I will not argue that biomedical research is more important than space exploration or reading programs, but I will argue that money intended for something as beneficial as scientific research should never be scarce. To train more people and to fully develop the young researchers of today, the slight consistent increase in funding to coincide with economic change is a must.