Pharyngula

Posted by: Dursun Sakarya | September 13, 2006 12:05 AM

Bush Co. hates science? But of course, reality has a Liberal bias.

Posted by: Molly, NYC | September 13, 2006 10:05 AM

Haven't you noticed? Contrary to their stated policies (the GOP equivalent of a magician's misdirection; you can see how that one about "respecting human life" is working for them), Republicans love-love-LOVE spending our tax dollars-- as long as it's funnelled into the pockets of fellow Republicans.

There is no function of government so vital that these jamokes don't consider it secondary to pork. Whole national departments (Defense, Homeland Security, eg), have been repurposed to this end.

Grants to scientific investigators don't really lend themselves to that sort of vigorish. So from their POV, not much point in funding them.

If they were channelled through, say, the big pharma companies first--then you'd see funding increases.

Posted by: Nick Anthis | September 13, 2006 10:18 AM

Damn typos. That's supposed to say "much more valuable".

Posted by: jan andrea | September 13, 2006 11:07 AM

My husband travels to Goddard Space Flight Center every once in a while, and last time he went, people were really glum. You know the manned moon/Mars missions that Bush wants to do? Well, they got most of their funding from the earth sciences -- Bush has contrived to cut almost all of NASA's earth science stuff (because it's mostly those inconvenient environmentalists, of course). Now, I'm sure the moon will be useful as a space station, some day, but the chances that we can get to Mars without being fried by solar radiation (from which we aren't protected after we leave the Earth's magnetosphere, and Mars hasn't got one of those) are pretty darned slim. I'd love to live on Mars, but it's a pipe dream at best, and cutting funding to study our planet to send humans to Mars is idiocy, in my opinion. There's very little that robotic probes can't do safer and cheaper. Then again, he's got so little regard for post-birth human life, it probably doesn't bother him much that he'd be sending astronauts to their deaths :P

Posted by: Orac | September 13, 2006 12:22 PM

Although the Bush Administration richly deserves criticism for the last three NIH budgets, the situation between 1999 and 2003 was much more complicated than just "Bush bad." In fact, Bush completed the five year doubling of the NIH budget that began under the last three budgets of the Clinton administration, one of the few good policy decisions he has made. The problem is, after that there was no plan to consolidate the gains and after 2003 the budget went first flat and then into decline.

One part of the problem is that univesities have become so dependent on NIH largesse that it is now expected that researchers will bring either all or significant fractions of their own salaries using grant support. Another part of the problem is that the NIH is enamored of funding more large multiinstitutional collaborative efforts, arguably at the expense of R01 grants to individual investigators.

Posted by: Chris_D | September 13, 2006 1:02 PM

Hahaha...Bush is incompetent? You guys are just realizing this now? The United States is the laughing stock of the world for not only electing this dude in the first place, but re-electing him after such a dismal first term.

Unbeleivable.

Lets take stock of the political failures under his watch.

Kyoto.
Iraq.
Katrina.
No action at all taken on global warming.
Bin Laden still at large and active.
Abu Grab.
The deficit.

Come on America. No one will help you unless you help yourselves. Stop acting so dumb!!!

Posted by: Orac | September 13, 2006 1:29 PM

The total funding for Type-1 grants has decreased steadily since 2002, so although there has been a slight increase in the value per grant, the total number of grants has fallen sharply. Since the number of applications received increases in most years, this means that success rates have dropped even more drastically (although success rates dropped in 2005 despite there being fewer applications than in 2004).

You also forget that, to keep the number of new R01s awarded from plunging even more precipitously, starting in 2005 the NIH instituted a policy of cutting new grants across-the-board even beyond the recommendation of the budget analysts who decide if the amount of money requested is reasonable for the work proposed. My grant, for instance, was cut a cool 23% right off the top. This year, I'm told, new grants are being cut 28%. Moreover, the funding for the second, third, fourth, and fifth years is also being cut. In my case, my second year budget was cut by 3%. I expect a bigger cut next year.