Put American innovation first by funding the NSF and NIH

The Trump administration is risking Americans' health and safety by cutting science and research funding.

By Anonymous

Every morning, the J2 bus hums down Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, Md., carrying with it young researchers—just 21 or 22 years old—bound for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where they will begin their training as tomorrow’s scientists. This daily journey reflects a long tradition of American global leadership in scientific research, fueling technological advancements, medical breakthroughs, and economic growth. U.S. government funding, through institutions such as NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF), has played a central role in this success.

However, the Trump administration’s recent constraints on the NSF and NIH threaten to derail this progress, delivering an entirely avoidable self-inflicted wound to American innovation that follows decades of declining biological and biomedical research funding.

If we don’t amend our approach, and the United States continues to underfund its scientific enterprise, we risk falling behind in the very fields that will define the 21st century. In an era when scientific advancements are increasingly synonymous with economic and national security, reducing investment in science runs contrary to fostering American innovation and keeping Americans safe.

Recently, the NSF terminated approximately 10% of its workforce. On Feb. 8, the government instituted a cap on “indirect” rates associated with NIH grants to scientists at research institutions across the country. Indirect rates are overhead that supports research infrastructure, including lab space, utilities, and administrative tasks. These costs are not taken from the grants themselves but are added on. For example, if a scientist receives $1 million from the NIH to study drug resistance in microbes, and the institution has negotiated a 40% indirect rate with the government, the university receives $1.4 million.

Indirect funds are critical to ensuring that the lights will not turn off in the middle of an experiment. The administration—recently challenged by an injunction—primarily argue that if universities need money to keep the lights on, they should practice more fiscal responsibility or use endowments to pay the electric bill. The vast majority of American universities don’t have the multibillion-dollar endowments of a Harvard or Princeton (which have concomitant multibillion-dollar annual operations), nor do endowments have the liquidity of a checking account.

Universities maintain their balance sheet largely through tuition fees and private donations. Research is secondary and funded, mainly, by highly competitive grants from the government, the largest source of research funding in the United States. When research becomes more expensive—such as when a 15% indirect cost cap hits a university structured to operate at 35% indirect—universities need choose between their educational mission, and their research mission. In such a scenario, as demonstrated at various universities, the first items typically on the chopping block are graduate student and postdoctoral researcher positions.

In response, one might say that if research at universities is so financially untenable, then colleges should develop a more fiscally sustainable model of operation akin to how companies prioritize a manageable R&D portfolio to preserve profitability. There is both truth and misconception in this argument.

As Derek Thompson has posited, universities have a substantive administrative bloat issue that need be addressed in a material manner to resolve “modern institutions trying to be everything to everyone.” However, it is a false dilemma that we need to stifle American scientific innovation to improve our funding ecosystem. Academic science is unique because it is largely focused on science that, often, private companies simply cannot afford to do without government subsidies. Moreover, the graduate students and postdoctoral researchers trained in academia frequently transition into careers in the tech, biotech, and pharma, forming a symbiosis between academia and industry that drives innovation. The economic laceration of academic science would adversely disrupt that mutualism.

Take for example President Richard Nixon’s “war on cancer.” In 1971, Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, establishing the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to work toward curing cancer, then the second-leading cause of death in the United States. However, only decades later did we reap the benefits of this ambitious governmental investment in basic science. Fundamental research—understanding how the immune system functions, how DNA repair occurs, and how to sequence DNA in high-throughput manner—has laid the groundwork for more effective cancer diagnoses and treatments that significantly improve patient outcomes. Hence, today’s therapies—and those of the future—are built on decades of basic science initiated by the NCI and advanced through collaborations with generations of professors, postdoctoral scientists, and graduate students.

Most researchers I know would welcome reforms to NIH and NSF. But reform requires nuance. Small public universities do not function the same way as large private institutions, and a one-size-fits-all approach could do more harm than good. This is precisely why now is an opportune moment to engage stakeholders—scientists, taxpayers, university administrators, politicians, and government officials—to develop bureaucracy-reducing solutions without undermining the teaching, research, and industry ecosystem that has delivered training, innovation, and cures.

A short-term but ill-informed attempt at fiscal prudence could lead to serious long-term economic and strategic vulnerabilities. China is doubling down on its scientific investment by increasing government subsidized R&D spending, aiming to become the global leader in artificial intelligence and biopharma. A retreat from science will drive talented young researchers abroad, repel international scholars who contribute to U.S. innovation, and cede our ability to maintain global leadership in research and technology. If the United States is to remain at the forefront of innovation, to we must recognize that sustained, robust support for scientific research is a necessary investment.

Every Nobel Laureate starts somewhere—often not in grand lecture halls, but on quiet morning commutes fueled by coffee and curiosity. As the J2 bus rolls toward the NIH every morning, it carries with it young scientists who might change the world. It is our duty as Americans to ensure that their hard work and curiosity are met with opportunity such that tomorrow’s discoveries and cures are not left stranded at the bus stop.

By a doctoral candidate in biosciences at a large Midwestern university who was granted anonymity by The Contrarian for fear of retribution.

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