1. I'm supposed to be finishing my taxes but I've got another four hours. So let's talk about an absolute disaster in the US science ecosystem.
The NIH's BRAIN (Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) suffered catastrophic budget cuts—under Biden, no less—and now is unlikely to fund any new grants and will likely cut funding to existing grantees.
2. To be clear, I don't have a horse in this race. I've never applied to this initiative and very much doubt I ever will.
But this is literally a catastrophe for US science. It's bad not to fund this research, *but what is so much worse is to create the perception it would be funded and then bail.*
4. So why is this worse than just not funding this critical area of neuroscience?
So many reasons. Let me try to enumerate a few of them. I'm confident I won't manage to cover them all, and look forward to others' additional suggestions.
5. This program put out a call for proposals last year, and has another one pending in June.
Researchers put thousands if not tens of thousands of hours that they could have spent doing science into preparing those proposals instead. It looks like NONE of those will be funded.
6. And then there's all the time that researchers spent reviewing those proposals as well. I've written about the deadweight loss of this system — even when some proposals ARE funded — previously. When *no* proposals are funded this is nothing less than a targeted attack on US science.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000065
Scientists waste substantial time writing grant proposals, potentially squandering much of the scientific value of funding programs. This Meta-Research Article shows that, unfortunately, grant-proposal competitions are inevitably inefficient when the number of awards is small, but efficiency can be restored by awarding funds through a modified lottery, or by weighting past research success more heavily in funding decisions.
7. So never mind that the NIH wasted massive labor by the best scientists in the game.
It's worse than that. Because in science, universities outsource merit evaluation to the NIH. Want to be hired, promoted, tenured? Go get grants. Never mind that the universities have more, better information.
8. There will be brilliant researchers who invested months to write proposals that ranked in the top 10% — guaranteed funding, normally — who will go unfunded and will be denied tenure as a result.
That is on congress, but it's also on the NIH. They're not babes in the woods. They know congress.
9. The mission of the NIH is not just to advance scientific knowledge. Even more, it is to cultivate a research ecosystem in the US that bolsters academia and industry alike, to the massive benefit of the US economy and world standing.
They just abandoned a generation. It's a catastrophic failure.
11. Perhaps second order, but there are knock-on effects as well. After this, top investigators aren't going to waste the 100-200 hours it takes to write a research proposal for the BRAIN initiative call that is still out for this June.
If the money does arrive, it won't go to the best people now.
12. It's easy to blame congress. And they deserve it.
But my anger, and this thread, is largely directed at the NIH. Of course politicians harm the best interests of the US at every opportunity to get elected.
The NIH has enough experience to anticipate this and respond accordingly. They failed.
13. US funding agencies need to recognize their role in the scientific ecosystem.
They need to acknowledge *and mitigate* the enormous costs of running grant proposal contests.
They need to be aware of how their decisions are used by universities who find it convenient to outsource evaluation.
14. They need to recognize that a fickle congress can cause catastrophic harm to US science and they need to embrace Eisenhower's vision of science as paramount to national prosperity and security.
"How would we have known congress would do that?" is not acceptable when congress keeps doing that.
16. NIH has to dispense with the fallacy that grant proposal contests are without cost to science. They need to mitigate those costs, and they must ensure that whatever costs *are* incurred are repaid in multiples.
This sort of catastrophe should be a national embarrassment. Don't accept it.
/fin
@ct_bergstrom Epic rant. One can substitute almost any US government agency that funds science and tell roughly the same story.
Let me add this: a scientific grant typically covers only a fraction of the cost of running a lab. That means proposal writing is constant, and only a small fraction of your submitted proposals are accepted even if they are excellent. Proposals that are accepted are also subject to available funding. The threat of budget cuts is always there. 😳
Carl T. Bergstrom
Auscandoc
David J. Atkinson
Iris Young (he/they/she) (PhD)
Everyday.Human Derek
Carl A. B. Pearson
Virginicus