To understand how biomedical scientists feel as they watch Donald Trump and Elon Musk aim their bazookas at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recall how you felt when the Taliban aimed their bazookas at the 1,500-year-old Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan. “Senseless” may be one word that springs to mind. “Permanent” might be another.
But the destruction of NIH is in many ways worse than the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. The Buddhas were an astounding feat of architecture and sculpture and devotion. But there were just two of them. NIH contains 27 institutes and centres, each of which specialises in the research and cure of a whole class of diseases. The work of these institutes occurs, in part, at NIH proper, but the bulk of the work occurs at universities (the so-called “extramural” program) funded through grants.
This collective research builds on continuing advances in every field of medicine as well as chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, biology, and more. The American biomedical science enterprise, which has eradicated polio, created artificial organs, and mapped the genome to identify the root causes of disease, is the greatest collective accomplishment of human beings in the history of the world. Once derailed, it will take a very long time to recover.
Musk has pointed his bazookas at two longstanding practices, the disruption of which is causing a great deal of havoc and despair among university-based scientists: the indirect costs and the grant-review committees (also known as “Study Sections”).
Indirect costs are negotiated between the individual universities and the federal government. These rates account for the federal monies that accompany each grant but do not go to the scientist. Rather, they go to the universities to create and maintain the environments that host and facilitate the research. Colloquially, but inadequately, they are said to be for “keeping the lights on.”
Study sections—which have largely been shuttered since late January—are the groups of (thirty or so) expert peer reviewers who review each grant proposal that comes into NIH on a given topic. Peer review is how science exercises quality control. In normal times, each study section meets three times a year for two gruelling days of review, discussion, argument, and compromise.
I served on a study section for four years in my area of expertise—brain imaging and addiction. It generally took me two months prior to each meeting to review the eight or ten proposals that were assigned to me each review cycle. All senior scientists are expected to serve at least one four-year term. There is no compensation. Out of the study-section meetings, scores emerge for each grant proposal. At a later meeting of its leaders (the “council”), each institute decides how many of the top-scoring grant proposals on topics that relate to its mission to fund.
How will the loss of indirect costs damage science?
The indirect costs do not only “keep the lights on.” They pay for all types of infrastructure intended to serve the scientific research effort. For instance, there are special NIH grants for US$2 million dollars to purchase and make new “high end, shared instrumentation” like the latest brain scanner available to all investigators using brain imaging in their research. But the scanner actually costs US$3million. And the renovation to the building to accommodate it costs another US$2 million. These additional costs must be covered by a dean or president of a large research university—with indirects. Without that new brain scanner, a leading centre for brain imaging, like Yale, would not be able to maintain its lead.
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Where's the data? How much is cut and from what?
Using terms like Bazookas does not help your case. In fact, it sounds absurd.
Since you are a scientist, I would assume that you would provide mathematical specificity and accuracy.