OK, so I am going to go on a tiny rant. Forgive me.
I would just like to thank President Bush for vetoing the omnibus spending bill that includes the NIH budget. Because it is not like any of us need that money...
For those of you who don't know, NIH funding works like this. You submit a grant, and that grant is assigned a score that is essentially a ranking by the study section for your area of research. Then when Congress finally gets their act together and passes a budget, they start at the top of the rankings and work their way down depending on how much money they have.
This means among other things that even after your grant has been evaluated and given a high score -- a score that nearly guarantees funding -- you have to wait until NIH gets its budget to actually receive the funds. This leaves several people I know in the unfortunate position of waiting for Congress and the President to agree.
So once again, I would like to thank the President for showing what can only be called statesmanship in vetoing the Health and Human Services budget while in the same breath signing a $450 billion dollar bill to fund Iraq.
- Log in to post comments
Grammar question:
Is it "None of us is" or "None of us are"? I can't remember.
From the deep dark recesses of my memory, which could be at fault, none is singular so it should be "is". One IS whatever. "Not one" IS whatever.
According to Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (Fourth Edition):
I think a quote from Paul Brain's Common Errors in English sums it up well "There's a lot of disagreement about this one. 'None' can be either singular or plural, depending on the meaning you intend and its context in the sentence.... If it's not obvious to you which it should be, don't worry; few of your readers will be certain either."
Back on topic, you can let you congress person know you want a veto override here: http://capwiz.com/faseb/issues/alert/?alertid=10542926&type=CO
Think of it as "None [of us] is" and you can see it is singular.
Back in late 2004 and early 2005, I was in exactly that position. I had gotten what seemed to be a slam-dunk fundable score on my second shot at an R01. While the NIH continued to be funded under an interim continuing resolution, I waited. Unfortunately, my score wasn't in the highest of the high fundable ranges, which meant that it didn't fall under the interim payline that the NIH uses when this happens, usually a very tight, very safe payline that it liberalizes to the "real" payline once Congress and the President give it its money.
Worse, this was right at the time of plunging paylines. In the summer when I got my score, it was approximately 5 to 6 percentile points below last year's payline, and everyone told me that never in the history of the NIH had paylines fallen that far in one year. I looked as though I were in like flint. Then, as the months dragged on, rumors of the payline kept saying it was going to be lower and lower--until it got into the range of my score. I called the program officer to ask if I should resubmit my grant, as it was no longer clear that it would be in the fundable range, and she couldn't really help or predict much. Finally, when the "real" payline was announced in late February 2005, I was relieved to see that I had squeaked in under the payline by around 0.4 percentile points. So, in around 7 months' time, thanks to budget wrangling occurring right around the time of a plunging payline, my score went from a slam dunk to just barely squeezing in under the line.
Nerve wracking, it was.