NIH Budget Cuts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funding for research grants from most of the NIH institutes is down to 5-10% of grants submitted. Many highly talented researchers with the potential to contribute major advances to science are already closing their research labs and finding new careers. Others who have been able to hold on are spending an inordinate amount of time perfecting their already outstanding grant applications to get into the funding range. This results in significant slowing down of their research programs.

Science and technical advancement in the US will soon be eclipsed by research in other countries (e.g. China) where funding is more generous. The US is loosing the competitive edge and any further reduction in the NIH budget will make this happen even faster.

and yet... so much research turns out to be garbage. cancer research using compromised cell lines. decades of research in social psychology crumbling before our eyes, neuroscience research widely inflated using incorrect statistics... and that's just stuff that has been checked.

Are you a scientist?

yes

Then you should know better that plenty of worthwhile research gets done through the NIH. Anyone can cherry-pick wasteful examples in each field. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the solution?

not saying this is the solution, but to run around like a headless chicken screaming "research! research" is not the solution either.

there clearly exist huge problems in research community - specifically, lack of viable research careers/academic for most phds and way too many bad papers - quantity over quality type. apart from a top 5% research superstars, most researchers are paid laughable wages. likes, nurses and accountants make significantly more money in many cases. in parallel, a great amount of worthless research is being published obscuring what is essential and valuable. the medieval model is not working any more. what is the solution i don't know.

Well you ladies have effectively convinced me to take the S out of STEM when encouraging my kid about potential school and career choices.

DH and i are both phd scientists and unless something changes I don't want my daughters to pursue science. science has become similar to professional sports - a few superstars on the top lead great lives meanwhile most of the field lives poorly yet has spent too much time pursuing degrees it's hard to switch careers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funding for research grants from most of the NIH institutes is down to 5-10% of grants submitted. Many highly talented researchers with the potential to contribute major advances to science are already closing their research labs and finding new careers. Others who have been able to hold on are spending an inordinate amount of time perfecting their already outstanding grant applications to get into the funding range. This results in significant slowing down of their research programs.

Science and technical advancement in the US will soon be eclipsed by research in other countries (e.g. China) where funding is more generous. The US is loosing the competitive edge and any further reduction in the NIH budget will make this happen even faster.

+1 Yes this is so true, on both counts.

Yup. One reason the economy was gamgbusters during the Clinton years is that lots of money was going into scientific research. Trump truly has no understanding of what makes our economy great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Over ten years at NIH and I don't see any fat. Funding was flat for a long time, raises were nonexistent. These are highly specialized scientists dedicating their lives to finding cures for some of the most devastating diseases. Not to mention responding to crises such as Zika, Ebola, and others.
I heard that Trump said he was going to "eliminate all diseases". How is that consistent with a nearly 20% cut at NIH, which includes not just salaries and programs at NIH, but grant funding for scientists around the country?

I am a foreign research scientist and I see a lot of "fat", but it is not limited to NIH, it is prevalent everywhere in the US, in professional as well as private life. You guys are just so rich, you don't even realize how much you're tossing and consuming

I'm French, BTW, I don't come from a developed nation. I first realized this was a first world problem when a fellow researcher from Algeria worked in our Parisian department and commented on how wasteful we were, how we spent funds willy-nilly and didn't realize how lucky we were. Well, after several years of living in the US, I can forward that comment to Americans in general, because there's about the same financial gap!

It starts when Americans are young: the number of pencils consumed annually in one classroom, to pick a simple example. Here kids toss them about, lose them, break them, take a fresh one, etc, without thinking that this might be a precious resource. Same for drawing paper, or other classroom resource that's not electronic (and I'm pretty sure that in a few years, they'll toss their laptops to the floor unthinkingly!). In a research lab, the equivalent example are pipette tips: people lose their tips, it goes into the garbage, they take another one from the box, and think nothing of it, because they're so cheap it doesn't even cross their minds. Except that it should. In Algeria, they reuse those things because they can't afford to continually buy new ones. In France, we have to be conservative, but we do buy new tips as needed.

Not only do people think nothing of consuming great quantities of stuff that they could conserve better, but they are also used to certain luxury standards in their daily life. Houses keep getting larger, leading to more expensive housing, utilities and property taxes. For professional or school building, a certain number of bathrooms per people are set into the regulations, for example, and a certain amount of space per person calculated into the proportions of the rooms, or cubicles or toilet stalls. These things cost money, in total amount of square feet in the finished building and how many prime real estate was bought for the construction. Every building has to have art and green spaces and water fountains. There must be a room with complimentary coffee, refrigerators, microwaves and perhaps dishwashers. Every few years, people feel the need to redecorate the teacher's lounge or meeting space.

I'm not saying that we should do away with these things, and I'm not saying every American lives like this. I'm saying that saving money means doing very nitty-gritty work and shaving off a little bit of funding from every single operation in every single department. And that is usually impossible, because nobody wants to pay a group of people to do this, even thought it would be so much better than eliminating entire agencies who do critical work.

The thing you have to realize that generally the most expensive thing in America is time and labour. It would cost more to clean, store, and sort those pippettes than would ever be recouped from reusing them. Same with pencils and paper; schools are understaffed and teachers overworked; putting paper and pencils on a quota would save a negligible amount of money but consume a lot of instructional time

You missed my point entirely, which is that a deep change in thinking has to occur, in order not to be wasteful. France has strong wage regulations that guarantee good salaries and we still save money by reusing certain items and saving on energy. For example: most homes in America have water heaters that heat water 24/7, whereas in most of the UK and the European continent, home-owners save money by putting their boilers on timers, in order to save energy and money by only heating water when it's needed. We automatically have a conservative frame of mind when using things, whereas here my mind boggles when I see how much is bought, partially consumed and tossed away. When you've live elsewhere, it's scary. We need to teach kids that we need to be aware of our consumption. Ratchet down our expectations in daily life. Did we need that multi-story light-filled lounge on the visitors' side of the NIH clinical center? No, it's always half empty. But it sure is impressive for visitors and you can bet it cost a pretty penny.

There was a study recently showing that a mile of metro costs like 5 or 10 times more in NYC than in Paris. the whole "but our labor is expensive" is a ridiculous excuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NIH does crucial work but there's a lot of fat. I could cut the budget 10% today, 10% if I worked a while on it.

Please tell us exactly what you would cut. Inquiring minds would like to know.

May I answer?
Top universities charge 70 - 90% overhead to NIH grants, i.e., only 55 cents on a taxpayer dollar goes to a project.
The rest goes to general budget, including to pay a million-dollar president salary and free mansion, third to half of that to swarms of associate deans and executive VPs such as for diversity and inclusion, disability services,
and subsidize even more obscene pay for sports coaches and the departments like gender studies that bring no grants.
That is actually modest compared to the typical 200% overhead in DOE labs (which get much from NIH under inter-departmental agreements), where only 30 - 35 cents of taxpayer dollar
goes to a project. Much of the rest goes to similar pay packages to multiple levels of managers, and then more to corporate profit of managing companies like Lockheed or Battelle.
The unis say they must get that overhead to support research, but gladly accept private grants (Wellcome Trust, Beckman Foundation, Gates Foundation, etc) that cap overhead at 10% or nothing at all.
The corporate private funders negotiate overhead, often down to 20% or so. Only the sucker NIH pays with no negotiation.
If we cut all overhead to 20%, even with 20% topline cut the projects will get 64 cents on present dollar - which is more than now in all places and much more than in many.
How Harvard's Faust expressing outrage over NIH cuts while drawing a 1 M salary from overhead while postdocs make at best 3 K/month after tax in Boston (where basic rental is 2 K/month) is morally superior to Trump?

Further, NIH gave over 500 grants in FY16 to foreign institutions. That is the ONLY govt. agency in the world that funds research by foreign PIs.
Many are from Canada. But US PIs are not even eligible to apply to CIHR (he Canadian NIH equivalent).
I once applied to get some computer time (not even real money) from a Canadian program that had a call directly in my area,
with a supporting Canadian collaborator. (The call did not explicitly require the PI to be from Canada).
Next week I got an e-mail from an obviously stunned program manager saying that they NEVER gave anything to non-Canadians
and can't fathom why one would think they should or would.

We need:
1. Cap ALL overhead to 20% with no discussion. Saves about 30% relative to the average 70% overhead (1.2/1.7)
2. Ban all grants to foreign PIs, unless in reciprocity where that country awards an equal amount to US PIs (saves another 1%)
3. Require all overhead to be demonstrably spent solely for direct support of projects
4. Eliminate all "ethical oversight boards", "diversity" requirements and such beyond basic equal rights.
The 3 and 4 are hard to quantify quickly, but clearly very substantial.

THEN ask taxpayers for more funding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
We need:
1. Cap ALL overhead to 20% with no discussion. Saves about 30% relative to the average 70% overhead (1.2/1.7)
2. Ban all grants to foreign PIs, unless in reciprocity where that country awards an equal amount to US PIs (saves another 1%)
3. Require all overhead to be demonstrably spent solely for direct support of projects
4. Eliminate all "ethical oversight boards", "diversity" requirements and such beyond basic equal rights.
The 3 and 4 are hard to quantify quickly, but clearly very substantial.

THEN ask taxpayers for more funding.

You clearly know what you are talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Listening to NPR - saying that a good number of these cuts will not be approved by Congress, since some are completely ridiculous. Fogarty at NIH might be one of those preserved, since it manages foreign post-docs, and without those poorly paid slaves (oops, meant to say "respected workforce"), biomedical research at NIH will grind to a halt

The slaves are motivated to massage the research into the produce the results their masters want... not genuine research.
Hard to blame them, because desperate people in their home countries lie, cheat and forge to get ahead - starting with schools years.

[Anonymous]

How Harvard's Faust expressing outrage over NIH cuts while drawing a 1 M salary from overhead while postdocs make at best 3 K/month after tax in Boston (where basic rental is 2 K/month) is morally superior to Trump?"

this is a very good question. trump is no friend of science but i am tired of moral posturing by people who run one of the most exploitative industries in the USA. hundress of thousands of talented high achievers are languishing at 2year 50k "jobs".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Over ten years at NIH and I don't see any fat. Funding was flat for a long time, raises were nonexistent. These are highly specialized scientists dedicating their lives to finding cures for some of the most devastating diseases. Not to mention responding to crises such as Zika, Ebola, and others.
I heard that Trump said he was going to "eliminate all diseases". How is that consistent with a nearly 20% cut at NIH, which includes not just salaries and programs at NIH, but grant funding for scientists around the country?

Perhaps he will sell his own line of essential oils. It'll be great, you are going to love it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NIH does crucial work but there's a lot of fat. I could cut the budget 10% today, 10% if I worked a while on it.

Please tell us exactly what you would cut. Inquiring minds would like to know.

May I answer?
Top universities charge 70 - 90% overhead to NIH grants, i.e., only 55 cents on a taxpayer dollar goes to a project.
The rest goes to general budget, including to pay a million-dollar president salary and free mansion, third to half of that to swarms of associate deans and executive VPs such as for diversity and inclusion, disability services,
and subsidize even more obscene pay for sports coaches and the departments like gender studies that bring no grants.
That is actually modest compared to the typical 200% overhead in DOE labs (which get much from NIH under inter-departmental agreements), where only 30 - 35 cents of taxpayer dollar
goes to a project. Much of the rest goes to similar pay packages to multiple levels of managers, and then more to corporate profit of managing companies like Lockheed or Battelle.
The unis say they must get that overhead to support research, but gladly accept private grants (Wellcome Trust, Beckman Foundation, Gates Foundation, etc) that cap overhead at 10% or nothing at all.
The corporate private funders negotiate overhead, often down to 20% or so. Only the sucker NIH pays with no negotiation.
If we cut all overhead to 20%, even with 20% topline cut the projects will get 64 cents on present dollar - which is more than now in all places and much more than in many.
How Harvard's Faust expressing outrage over NIH cuts while drawing a 1 M salary from overhead while postdocs make at best 3 K/month after tax in Boston (where basic rental is 2 K/month) is morally superior to Trump?

Further, NIH gave over 500 grants in FY16 to foreign institutions. That is the ONLY govt. agency in the world that funds research by foreign PIs.
Many are from Canada. But US PIs are not even eligible to apply to CIHR (he Canadian NIH equivalent).
I once applied to get some computer time (not even real money) from a Canadian program that had a call directly in my area,
with a supporting Canadian collaborator. (The call did not explicitly require the PI to be from Canada).
Next week I got an e-mail from an obviously stunned program manager saying that they NEVER gave anything to non-Canadians
and can't fathom why one would think they should or would.

We need:
1. Cap ALL overhead to 20% with no discussion. Saves about 30% relative to the average 70% overhead (1.2/1.7)
2. Ban all grants to foreign PIs, unless in reciprocity where that country awards an equal amount to US PIs (saves another 1%)
3. Require all overhead to be demonstrably spent solely for direct support of projects
4. Eliminate all "ethical oversight boards", "diversity" requirements and such beyond basic equal rights.
The 3 and 4 are hard to quantify quickly, but clearly very substantial.

THEN ask taxpayers for more funding.

Your text is very familiar. Have you been commenting on the Washington Post articles about this topic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NIH does crucial work but there's a lot of fat. I could cut the budget 10% today, 10% if I worked a while on it.

Please tell us exactly what you would cut. Inquiring minds would like to know.

May I answer?
Top universities charge 70 - 90% overhead to NIH grants, i.e., only 55 cents on a taxpayer dollar goes to a project.
The rest goes to general budget, including to pay a million-dollar president salary and free mansion, third to half of that to swarms of associate deans and executive VPs such as for diversity and inclusion, disability services,
and subsidize even more obscene pay for sports coaches and the departments like gender studies that bring no grants.
That is actually modest compared to the typical 200% overhead in DOE labs (which get much from NIH under inter-departmental agreements), where only 30 - 35 cents of taxpayer dollar
goes to a project. Much of the rest goes to similar pay packages to multiple levels of managers, and then more to corporate profit of managing companies like Lockheed or Battelle.
The unis say they must get that overhead to support research, but gladly accept private grants (Wellcome Trust, Beckman Foundation, Gates Foundation, etc) that cap overhead at 10% or nothing at all.
The corporate private funders negotiate overhead, often down to 20% or so. Only the sucker NIH pays with no negotiation.
If we cut all overhead to 20%, even with 20% topline cut the projects will get 64 cents on present dollar - which is more than now in all places and much more than in many.
How Harvard's Faust expressing outrage over NIH cuts while drawing a 1 M salary from overhead while postdocs make at best 3 K/month after tax in Boston (where basic rental is 2 K/month) is morally superior to Trump?

Further, NIH gave over 500 grants in FY16 to foreign institutions. That is the ONLY govt. agency in the world that funds research by foreign PIs.
Many are from Canada. But US PIs are not even eligible to apply to CIHR (he Canadian NIH equivalent).
I once applied to get some computer time (not even real money) from a Canadian program that had a call directly in my area,
with a supporting Canadian collaborator. (The call did not explicitly require the PI to be from Canada).
Next week I got an e-mail from an obviously stunned program manager saying that they NEVER gave anything to non-Canadians
and can't fathom why one would think they should or would.

We need:
1. Cap ALL overhead to 20% with no discussion. Saves about 30% relative to the average 70% overhead (1.2/1.7)
2. Ban all grants to foreign PIs, unless in reciprocity where that country awards an equal amount to US PIs (saves another 1%)
3. Require all overhead to be demonstrably spent solely for direct support of projects
4. Eliminate all "ethical oversight boards", "diversity" requirements and such beyond basic equal rights.
The 3 and 4 are hard to quantify quickly, but clearly very substantial.

THEN ask taxpayers for more funding.

#1 sounds wonderful in principle but will never ever happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funding for research grants from most of the NIH institutes is down to 5-10% of grants submitted. Many highly talented researchers with the potential to contribute major advances to science are already closing their research labs and finding new careers. Others who have been able to hold on are spending an inordinate amount of time perfecting their already outstanding grant applications to get into the funding range. This results in significant slowing down of their research programs.

Science and technical advancement in the US will soon be eclipsed by research in other countries (e.g. China) where funding is more generous. The US is loosing the competitive edge and any further reduction in the NIH budget will make this happen even faster.

and yet... so much research turns out to be garbage. cancer research using compromised cell lines. decades of research in social psychology crumbling before our eyes, neuroscience research widely inflated using incorrect statistics... and that's just stuff that has been checked.

Are you a scientist?

yes

Then you should know better that plenty of worthwhile research gets done through the NIH. Anyone can cherry-pick wasteful examples in each field. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the solution?

not saying this is the solution, but to run around like a headless chicken screaming "research! research" is not the solution either.

there clearly exist huge problems in research community - specifically, lack of viable research careers/academic for most phds and way too many bad papers - quantity over quality type. apart from a top 5% research superstars, most researchers are paid laughable wages. likes, nurses and accountants make significantly more money in many cases. in parallel, a great amount of worthless research is being published obscuring what is essential and valuable. the medieval model is not working any more. what is the solution i don't know.

The DoD also does plenty of research. Is every little thing they do extremely useful, non-repetitive, etc etc? Yet they don't seem to be held to the same standard as the NIH and are in fact getting a huge raise in funding.
Why is that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Over ten years at NIH and I don't see any fat. Funding was flat for a long time, raises were nonexistent. These are highly specialized scientists dedicating their lives to finding cures for some of the most devastating diseases. Not to mention responding to crises such as Zika, Ebola, and others.
I heard that Trump said he was going to "eliminate all diseases". How is that consistent with a nearly 20% cut at NIH, which includes not just salaries and programs at NIH, but grant funding for scientists around the country?

You don't see any fat at NIH? Look up your admin's salary! I checked 3 and they are all making over 90k to answer phones and make copies!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NIH does crucial work but there's a lot of fat. I could cut the budget 10% today, 10% if I worked a while on it.

Please tell us exactly what you would cut. Inquiring minds would like to know.

May I answer?
Top universities charge 70 - 90% overhead to NIH grants, i.e., only 55 cents on a taxpayer dollar goes to a project.
The rest goes to general budget, including to pay a million-dollar president salary and free mansion, third to half of that to swarms of associate deans and executive VPs such as for diversity and inclusion, disability services,
and subsidize even more obscene pay for sports coaches and the departments like gender studies that bring no grants.
That is actually modest compared to the typical 200% overhead in DOE labs (which get much from NIH under inter-departmental agreements), where only 30 - 35 cents of taxpayer dollar
goes to a project. Much of the rest goes to similar pay packages to multiple levels of managers, and then more to corporate profit of managing companies like Lockheed or Battelle.
The unis say they must get that overhead to support research, but gladly accept private grants (Wellcome Trust, Beckman Foundation, Gates Foundation, etc) that cap overhead at 10% or nothing at all.
The corporate private funders negotiate overhead, often down to 20% or so. Only the sucker NIH pays with no negotiation.
If we cut all overhead to 20%, even with 20% topline cut the projects will get 64 cents on present dollar - which is more than now in all places and much more than in many.
How Harvard's Faust expressing outrage over NIH cuts while drawing a 1 M salary from overhead while postdocs make at best 3 K/month after tax in Boston (where basic rental is 2 K/month) is morally superior to Trump?

Further, NIH gave over 500 grants in FY16 to foreign institutions. That is the ONLY govt. agency in the world that funds research by foreign PIs.
Many are from Canada. But US PIs are not even eligible to apply to CIHR (he Canadian NIH equivalent).
I once applied to get some computer time (not even real money) from a Canadian program that had a call directly in my area,
with a supporting Canadian collaborator. (The call did not explicitly require the PI to be from Canada).
Next week I got an e-mail from an obviously stunned program manager saying that they NEVER gave anything to non-Canadians
and can't fathom why one would think they should or would.

We need:
1. Cap ALL overhead to 20% with no discussion. Saves about 30% relative to the average 70% overhead (1.2/1.7)
2. Ban all grants to foreign PIs, unless in reciprocity where that country awards an equal amount to US PIs (saves another 1%)
3. Require all overhead to be demonstrably spent solely for direct support of projects
4. Eliminate all "ethical oversight boards", "diversity" requirements and such beyond basic equal rights.
The 3 and 4 are hard to quantify quickly, but clearly very substantial.

THEN ask taxpayers for more funding.

I do not think you understand the business models. You quote facts -- overhead does exist, but it is the cost of running the labs, etc. For example,The overhead on my projects goes to cover things like: my health insurance, retirement, vacation time (that is about 30% of the OH). It goes to cover the office expenses (rent, electricity, HVAC, computers and lab supplies), that is about 15%. It goes to cover the cost of obtaining and administering the programs -- or I am supposed to work for free when doing that? And, it goes to pay the salaries of people up the food chain. It also covers my salary when there are gaps in funding (though often, that overlaps with the cost obtaining new work). It also covers the cost of security -- everyone where I work is cleared, and that means we need spaces to do work.


I do not work for NIH, but rather DoD related. All OH expenses are audited. The rates are set not by the institutions, but by the auditors. In my case, DCAA sets the OH rates.

[Anonymous]

Eliminate ethical oversight boards, are you nuts, PP? We need MORE oversight, not less. That doesn't have to mean expensive contractors, but there's no way in hell high-risk research needs less oversight.

The issue of indirects is a complicated one, and I agree needs reform. Universities absolutely profit off the backs of their researchers, and it's crummy. I know plenty of places in which the institution is glad to take the indirects, but won't contribute a penny towards the researcher's salary, and the lights go out if there's any lapse in funding.

There are plenty of American postdocs who would gladly take a position at the NIH--they pay better than academia and the benefits are great. The system is very broken.

But really, this budget is about posturing. It's about Trump wanting to make the poor, sick, and ignorant poorer, sicker, and more ignorant. It's about him wanting to appear strong while in reality being the weakest person ever to sit in the Oval Office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Eliminate ethical oversight boards, are you nuts, PP? We need MORE oversight, not less. That doesn't have to mean expensive contractors, but there's no way in hell high-risk research needs less oversight.

The issue of indirects is a complicated one, and I agree needs reform. Universities absolutely profit off the backs of their researchers, and it's crummy. I know plenty of places in which the institution is glad to take the indirects, but won't contribute a penny towards the researcher's salary, and the lights go out if there's any lapse in funding.

There are plenty of American postdocs who would gladly take a position at the NIH--they pay better than academia and the benefits are great. The system is very broken.

But really, this budget is about posturing. It's about Trump wanting to make the poor, sick, and ignorant poorer, sicker, and more ignorant. It's about him wanting to appear strong while in reality being the weakest person ever to sit in the Oval Office.

nope. these days you need to wait 3 months for IRB approval for a questionnaire. sorry but that doesn't make any sense. any random can deliver that questionnaire on the street - and even record to make fun of people - but a researcher can't do it.