NPR addresses the booms and busts in NIH funding

It’s no surprise that scientists are finding it tougher and tougher to get funding for their research – thanks largely, of course, to NIH funding and budget cuts. A recent NPR piece detailed the booms and busts in research funding, following Baylor College of Medicine associate professor Robert Waterland’s travails with finding funding for his obesity […]

By Meghana Keshavan on September 10, 2014 6:00 am

It’s no surprise that scientists are finding it tougher and tougher to get funding for their research – thanks largely, of course, to NIH funding and budget cuts.

A recent NPR piece detailed the booms and busts in research funding, following Baylor College of Medicine associate professor Robert Waterland’s travails with finding funding for his obesity research. His NIH grant ran out in 2012, and he hasn’t been able to get it renewed.

“We’re in survival mode right now,” Waterland said. The NPR piece continues:

Nationwide, about 16 percent of scientists with sustaining (known as “R01”) grants in 2012 lost them the following year, according to an NPR analysis. That left about 3,500 scientists nationwide scrambling to find money to keep their labs alive — including 35 at the Baylor College of Medicine.

The root cause is plain, and it’s not just about a current shortage in funding: The NIH budget shot steadily upward from 1998 to 2003. That spawned great jubilation in biomedicine and a gold-rush mentality. But it didn’t last. Since 2004, the NIH budget has decreased by more than 20 percent. (That’s not counting the hefty two-year bump the budget got from stimulus funds via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.)

NPR pieced together this useful infograph:

See the entire NPR piece here:

U.S. Science Suffering From Booms and Busts in Funding