A strong science budget, but NIH heading for a cliff

In his annual budget request to Congress, President Obama on Monday recommended strong funding increases for many scientific agencies that support the life sciences. However, the president’s budget request for the National Institutes of Health is unlikely to prevent a decline in biomedical research in 2011.

NIH needs $37 billion in 2011

On Jan. 28, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and its member societies, including ASBMB, recommended that the NIH budget be increased to $37 billion during 2011. As the research community awaits the Monday release of the President Obama’s budget request to Congress, FASEB and its members believe the biomedical research community needs a large budget increase to sustain research funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, known as the stimulus bill.

A confusing message for science

During his first State of the Union address, President Obama highlighted the importance of science and innovation for the American economy. But, despite a mention of “the largest investment in basic research funding in history,” he did little to clarify how science agencies would fair after the stimulus package expires.

Leaving science out in the cold?

During Wednesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama will propose that discretionary, non-security spending be frozen at current levels for the next three years, several news agencies report. While exempting specific agencies, the president’s plan could lead to difficult times for federal science agency budgets.

What makes DARPA so special?

On Jan. 7 at a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, officials from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, known as DARPA, presented what they believed were the characteristics of this defense-oriented research agency that have allowed it to innovate and succeed over it’s decades-long history. Skeptical, PCAST members questioned DARPA officials about the true source of DARPA’s perceived success.

NIH promotes jobs and science from stimulus

The National Institutes of Health has published 166 “investment reports” about specific jobs and breakthrough science being funded by the stimulus act.  Reports detail a variety of research projects being performed with stimulus dollars in a variety of important fields of biomedical research.  In total, 2,000 of the 12,000 research grants funded with stimulus dollars are featured in these reports.

Read the investment reports on the NIH Web site.  The NIH also provides a state-by-state look at how stimulus dollars have been spent.

Collins: Reinvigorate the research community

Over the past month, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, has given several interviews and authored a high-profile “policy forum” piece in the journal Science. In each case, he continued to encourage robust support for the NIH that he says will bring about great new societal benefits.

In an article entitled “Opportunities for Research and NIH” in the Jan. 1 edition of Science, Collins reprises the five areas of biomedical research that he believes are ripe with opportunity: high-throughput technology, translational medicine, health-care reform, global health, and biomedical research community reinvigoration.

McCain and Coburn single out science as “waste”

In a report released Dec. 9, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., identify 100 projects funded by the stimulus package that they claim are wasteful government spending. Among these projects are 14 research grants funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

McCain and Coburn’s report singles out 10 studies from the NSF. Specifically, the report criticizes the use of stimulus funds to study the learning patterns of honey bees and to support educational programs that expose undergraduates to rainforest research.

Erector sets and Barbie dolls

Since Larry Summer’s now infamous remarks in 2005, the underrepresentation of women in science has gained a high level of attention. Harvard’s faculty and graduate students have joined the National Academy of Sciences, the Center for American Progress and other groups to study the reasons behind the underrepresentation of women in science. Now the American Enterprise Institute has decided to weigh in.

At a recent book forum hosted by AEI, Christina Hoff Sommers, an AEI resident scholar, presented her views on the dearth of women in science. Focusing on quantitative disciplines like physics, math and computer science, she argued that the smaller percentage of women in scientific disciplines is the result of innate differences in preference between men and women. Not only is the evidence for Sommers’ argument shaky, but her position creates a rationalization for the removal of policies that encourage the advancement of women in science.

Congress passes 2010 science budgets

The House and Senate have passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010, the large omnibus spending bill that includes budgets for the NIH, NSF and U.S. department of veteran’s affairs Medical and Prosthetics Research program.  The final budgets reflect the agreements reached by House and Senate negotiators in early December.  The House passed the appropriations act on Dec. 10 and the Senate passed the bill on Dec. 13.  The president is expected to sign the legislation before Dec. 18.

You can read more about the 2010 science budgets here.  More information is also available from the House Appropriations committee and the Library of Congress.