Burying beetles

extraordinary financial pressures that the NIH currently experience threatens the US science enterprise. This not only puts extreme pressure on established scientists but makes it very difficult for young people to develop their research programs. The NIH have put in place mechanisms to make it easier for young people to obtain their first grant, but all this does is get new researchers through the first four years of their careers. Renewing this first grant is extremely difficult. Young scientists must compete with the entire scientific community for an extremely limited amount of resources. Unfortunately, there are only two solutions to this problem: putting more money into research or shrinking the research enterprise. At the moment the US government is pursuing the latter. The result is trivial to forecast. The US science enterprise will shrink dramatically, while at the same time countries like India and China who heavily invest in research will become the world’s science and technology leaders. It seems to me that every American, Democrat or Republican, should be concerned about this and make it their highest priority and that of their elected officials to maintain the US’s leadership position in science and technology development. Saving a buck or two by cutting the budgets of funding agencies such as the NIH or NSF (the NIH’s and NSF’s research budgets are small change compared to other budget items; e.g. defense) is really short sighted and, importantly, the impact is long term. Firstly, people with career aspirations in science are going to be pruned. The days of pruning come when study sections meet — either for the first grant or the first renewal — and then when university promotion committees meet, by which time the aspiring scientist is 35+ and in need of a new career. Secondly, seeing established and starting scientists alike struggle so much to secure funding and make a living as scientists will turn off the coming generations from research.