On the sharp decline in NIH funding, a reader explains:
I'll interject a perspective from a longtime researcher who has funded his research primarily via NIH. The problem with the 15% per year during Clinton to the near zero today under Bush is not that we or anyone else expects 15% per year increases. Rather, the very sharp pull back in funding creates a funding whiplash because grants that are funded in 2007 for example, typically run for 3-5 years. Thus, each awarded grant encumbers a proportion of future money. Money for new grants each year come essentially from grants that have run out and from budget increases. New grants are critical to young researchers. The current situation is one of the worst case senarios for how you fund research. That is, fund lots of new grants (during the 15% increases), and now essentially freeze the budget. In previous years, if your grant was scored in the top 20% of all grants, you were likely to get funded. These days, the lack on funding increases means that the pool of money for new grants is such that you must score near the upper 10% for many of the institutes (e.g., National Institute of Mental Health grants have flirted with an 8% payline).[...]
Researchers understand that funding is in the mix of priorities along with everything else, we're not looking for more 15% increases. But, the damage of the current situation is real. I have seen laboratories severely curtail their work, and the researchers go from writing 2 or 3 grants per year to 6-7 per year. This isn't productive, it generates alot of work for everyone, and draws us out of the laboratory where we would normally be doing much more productive work.
