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NIH Funding Crisis

Up to The Big Picture
After the NIH budget doubling, it's harder than ever to get a grant. Here's what happened.


The Real Science Crisis: Bleak Prospects for Young Researchers
Chronicle of Higher Education , September 2007. "[F]or many of today's graduate students, the future could not look much bleaker. They see long periods of training, a shortage of academic jobs, and intense competition for research grants looming ahead of them. 'They get a sense that this is a really frustrating career path,' says Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. So although the operating assumption among many academic leaders is that the nation needs more scientists, some of brightest students in the country are demoralized and bypassing scientific careers."
Be Careful What You Wish For
ScienceCareers.org - "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."
Watching a Train Wreck, Part 1 - Engineering Science Blog
"Given that concerns about NIH funding levels have only recently hit the press, it's likely that we will see continuing increases in first-year graduate enrollments through at least 2007. This means increasing numbers of new PhDs for another 6-8 years and probably another decade of sizable increases in the ranks of postdocs. A whole crop of new PhDs is walking right into an already troubled labor market, and things probably won't start to improve for 10+ years."
What the NIH Bought With Double the Money
Chronicle of Higher Education "After five years, $13.6-billion has produced few major new treatments and little spreading of research wealth, but the agency's leaders and supporters counsel patience" (subscription required)
How to Get Fewer Scientists
Washington Post, July 24, 2007. "President Bush told cancer researchers gathered at the National Institutes of Health in January that we need to 'make sure that our scientists are given the tools and encourage young kids to become scientists in the first place.' Yet his administration's stingy NIH budgets over the past five years and its threat last week to veto the appropriations bill giving the NIH a small funding boost sound more like components of a Discourage Future Scientists Act."
Troubling Doubling
A great presentation by Paula Stephan on the NIH budget doubling.
NIH BUDGET: Boom and Bust
Couzin and Miller 316 (5823): 356 -- Science "Biomedical facilities are expanding after a growth spurt in the budget of the National Institutes of Health. Yet individual scientists say that it's harder than before to get their work funded." (subscription to Science required)
Watching a Train Wreck, Part 2 - Engineering Science Blog
"We've seen the effects of the NIH budget doubling on the grad student population. What about postdocs? ... From 1998-2003, the number of life sciences postdocs increased by 4,015. These new postdocs were all non-citizens. In fact, over the same time period, the number of US citizen / permanent resident postdocs decreased by 255."
The Scientist : 'Looming crisis' from NIH budget
"Four years of flat funding causing major shifts in US biomedical research, university officials and senior scientists warn Congress"