Transcription and Translation

From the AAAS:

The three agencies highlighted in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 and President Bush's American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) would do extremely well in the stimulus appropriations bill. The National Science Foundation (NSF) would receive $3.0 billion; the Department of Energy's Office of Science (DOE OS) would receive $2.0 billion; and Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would receive $520 million; nearly all of these supplementals are for R&D activities. The $5.5 billion allocated to these three agencies would finally put all three budgets on track to double over the next 7 to 10 years as envisioned in the ACI, America COMPETES, and Obama campaign promises.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) would receive $3.9 billion in the stimulus appropriations bill, divided roughly evenly between research and infrastructure (construction and maintenance of facilities). The stimulus funding would turn around a NIH budget that has been in decline since 2004. The Department of Energy's (DOE) energy programs would also be a winner with $2.0 billion for R&D and related activities in renewable energy and energy conservation, with billions more for DOE in weatherization, loan guarantee, and clean energy demonstration funds. And the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would receive $600 million, mostly for R&D.

Let's not mess things up this time! The last major increase to the NIH caused major problems years later. Money was simply pumped into new and existing grants, PIs hired many new grad students and postdocs, and the pyramid scheme got a major influx bloating the bottom of the academic edifice. As the bottom rose, many chunks fell of and as one Nobel Lauriate stated, we sacrificed a generation of scientists.

So what to do? President Obama has stated that we should "triple the number of fellowships in science to help spur the next generation of innovation". But as I pointed out yesterday, NIH funded labs must also change the way postdocs are treated. This can be done quite simply by

• Increasing the wage guidlines issued by the NIH


• Increasing funding for career postdocs

Let's see what happens.

(ht: Andrea D'Ambrogio)