Funding

Tristero correctly points out those churches that are concerned that they will lose their tax exempt status have a solution to their problems: ...this is a lie because the reverend knows very well that the IRS is not banning him from endorsing a candidate. He is quite free to do so. Likewise, his church is also free to endorse whoever they want to. All they need to do - and it's no big deal, really, unless the reverend and his church worship filthy mammon above all - is to forgo tax-exempt status... Where I kind of disagree with Tristero is with this: Maybe, but it is an indication of how…
Several of my fellow ScienceBloglings have noted that the increase in measles cases is due to idiots who refuse to get vaccinated. Beyond the obvious health threat this represents, there is a more subtle, yet equally murderous effect of all of this anti-vax woo. It distracts us from other vaccination programs that we need to institute. Every year, roughly 36,000 U.S. residents die from influenza--the 'boring' kind. Why this isn't viewed as a major health crisis, while breast cancer, which kills approximately the same number annually, is escapes me. Not because breast cancer isn't an awful…
A recent article by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) staff emphasized that NIAID funds over $800 million annually to study antimicrobial resistance. I've heard this same argument many times, and, every time, people always grumble about how that money includes all microorganisms, as opposed to bacterial antibiotic resistance (NIAID never breaks the money down by organism). In particular, the ESKAPE organisms (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumanni, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species), most of which…
Last week, I attended a talk by Alan Krensky, who is the Director of the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis and Strategic Initiatives (OPASI). First, OPASI is a superb acronym (Krensky has OPASI--it works better if you actually say it). One of OPASI's tasks is to oversee the NIH Roadmap and other cross-institute initiatives (more about that in a bit). The other priority is to assess how effective various programs are and to use this information to determine what future priorities should be. That sounds dry, but re-read that sentence: when Krensky speaks, you should listen. Much of his…
I recently argued that, rather than sending out tax rebates to stimulate the economy, the money should be sent to state and local governments because they're hurting and will spend the money. Case in point, Boston's public schools: The new superintendent of Boston's Public Schools (BPS), Carol Johnson, dropped a bombshell this past week, declaring that her department has discovered an unanticipated budget problem so severe that millions of dollars' worth of programs must be cut -- some schools may even be forced to close. ....According to the BPS and Menino's office, if no cuts are made,…
In keeping with the Broken Pipeline theme (see ScienceBloglings Greg, Coturnix, and Drug Monkey), this letter to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) from the Coalition for the Life Sciences about his efforts to shift more funding to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs seems timely (italics mine): I am writing on behalf of the Joint Steering Committee for Public Policy (JSC) to express our concerns regarding S. 1932 and its intent to double the percentage of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget earmarked for the Small Business…
Defense spending increases faster than inflation, while discretionary spending--including biomedical science--has the pie 'grow smaller.' From the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, here's what has happened to domestic discretionary spending as a percentage of program costs: It's also been growing slower than any other component of the budget: And, unlike any other sector, domestic spending has shrunk as a percentage of the economy: This is the context in which science policy is made. There is no science fairy that places research funds under your pillow. Research requires…
Well, that's good: Medical scientists just starting at universities have been, more and more often, left empty-handed when the federal government awards grants. So on Monday the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to medical research, announced a little help: a new program that will award $300-million to as many as 70 young scientists. The Early Career Scientist Program will pay salaries and provide research money for people who have held tenure-track positions for only two to six years, with the goal of supporting them through the early period before they are…
In the most recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, there is a perspective piece by Sara Rosenbaum that bluntly describes how the Bush Administration's opposition to S-CHIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program) is based on ideology and not economic cost (italics mine): Why would the President veto bipartisan legislation that does precisely what he insisted on -- namely, aggressively enroll the poorest children? One might blame the poisonous atmosphere that pervades Washington these days, but other important social policy reforms have managed to get through. One answer…
One piece of infection control legislation moving (slowly) through Congress is the Healthy Hospitals Act, H.R. 1174 (it's so slow that it's, erm, an act of 2007). H.R. 1174 would amend "the Social Security Act to require public reporting of health care-associated infections data by hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers and to permit the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish a pilot program to provide incentives to hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers to eliminate the rate of occurrence of such infections." There are many good provisions in this legislation: Hospitals…
Actually, the Mad Biologist's Rule of Base Ten Numbers is a pithier way of describing how certain numerical estimates or quantities are chosen based on little or no evidence. For example, when asked what an appropriate sample size is, someone will often respond, "ten." Of course, it might very well be that either nine or eleven are, in fact, the appropriate sample sizes, but we have a tendency when making shit up to focus on numbers divisible by five or ten, or, if we're dealing with really large quantities, increasing the quantities ten-fold (i.e., moving from 100 to 1000). To give a…
The Blue Devil wonders why Obama is raising more money than Clinton. One reason is that Obama supporters, on the whole, are significantly wealthier than Clinton supporters. If you look at three big donor states, California, Massachusetts, and New York, on the whole, Obama has less support as you go down the income ladder. Wealthier people have more money to give, particularly since many mid-sized and small contributions are often 'impulse buys.' When you're treading water, you don't give to candidates on a whim. This pattern also holds up in poorer states. I'll leave it to you to figure…
PhRMA, the lobbying group for the pharmaceutical companies, claims that drug companies spend more on research than on advertising. A recent study from PLoS Medicine debunks this claim: The value of our estimate over these others is that it is not based on extrapolating from annual reports of firms that are both diversified and multinational. Our estimate is driven by quantifiable data from highly reliable sources and concerns only the promotion of pharmaceutical products in the US. The derivation of our figure is thus transparent and can form the basis for a vigorous debate. From this new…
Because nothing says compassionate conservatism like cutting funding for poor disabled children. From the Washington Post: The Bush administration issued a new rule Friday that eliminates Medicaid reimbursement for certain transportation and administrative tasks undertaken by schools on behalf of students with disabilities. A wide range of medical services are furnished to students in schools. Speech and physical therapy are typical examples. Medicaid, the government's health insurance program for the poor, helps pay for those activities for low-income children. It will continue to pay.…
.5%. Woohoo! High fives all around! It is going to be another year of suck for NIH spending. The omnibus spending bill that has been passed by the House and Senate and is expected to be ratified by the President has the following in the matter of NIH funding: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) would receive a 0.5% increase after high hopes for a slice that would at least keep up with inflation. ... After Bush vetoed legislation that would have given NIH a $1 billion increase, Congress gave it $329 million more, or a 1% raise, to $29.2 billion. Some $300 million is designated for the…
Over at AmericaBlog, Chris compares U.S. and French Ph.D. programs: The French Grandes Ãcoles are the best schools in the world, but for higher degrees (Masters, PhD) nothing comes close to the US, possibly the UK. One reason is that the US and UK generally provide much more competition from around the world whereas (in general) the French system limits you to the best in France. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the US and UK will take "the best" of everywhere into classrooms which is much more difficult. Academic competition is healthy. (disclaimer: I'm going to discuss the sciences…
As a result of the veto by Bush of the the fiscal year 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill, if the veto is not overriden by Congress, the NIH will receive a de facto 3.7% funding cut: The bill, H.R.3043, also sought to bolster the budgets of the departments of Labor and Education, and carried a request for a total of $150.7 billion. Since its introduction in July, Bush has said he would veto the bill because it overshot his own budget recommendations. "We were hoping that [Bush's veto] wouldn't be the case," Carrie Wolinetz, Federation of American…
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…
Before I get to an excellent NY Times article by David Leonhardt about taxes, I want to say why taxes shouldmust matter to scientists. Even so often, I get a link or a comment which decries my posts about politics*. But the lay of the political landscape is vital for scientists--and not just for the 'science' issues, such as global warming. Quite simply, taxes are what fund much of U.S. science, especially 'basic' research, which is not only the cornerstone of applied research, but also comprises a lot of the cool stuff we discuss at ScienceBlogs. In a low-tax environment (when combined…
Tim Watkin thinks so (italics mine): In the half-century following the second world war US universities were magnets for students and academics from around the world. Crucially, many foreign graduate students studying the physical sciences, biological sciences, IT and engineering stayed after graduation. As the Gathering Storm report notes: "Government spending on R&D soared after World War II, and ... as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) reached a peak of 1.9% in 1964." In the last six or seven years, however, that tide has turned. Overseas institutions and companies are…