Biologists concerned about the uncertain funding environment should take action by "advocating for the benefits of government investments in scientific research and training," writes Thomas Pollard in a commentary in Cell.
Pollard, a cell biologist at Yale University, notes that biologists have historically taken government funding for granted. "Complacency was the norm" because the NIH budget doubled between 1998 and 2003, he says.
"Unfortunately, funding has stagnated since 2003, so taking inflation into account, the purchasing power of the NIH budget has declined about 20% over the last decade," he says.
Pollard provides an in-depth overview of the appropriations process and explains the importance of advocates in the legislative process. "Advocacy by individuals and organizations is the norm, and these diverse voices have powerful influences on setting priorities for all forms of government spending," he says, citing as examples the gun lobby and labor unions as groups that have effectively lobbied for their interests.
However, despite "being highly educated and seeking support for a worthy cause, scientists as a group are among the least engaged in advocacy."
Pollard proposes a number of paths through which biologists can play a bigger role in securing funding for science, ranging from joining a professional society that has an advocacy program to visiting elected officials on Capitol Hill or even inviting such officials to the lab.
And of course the easiest way to influence the future of science funding is to vote for politicians who support science. "The candidates' websites, voting records, and speeches will usually reveal their positions on federal funding of scientific research," Pollard says.
My feeling is that the
My feeling is that the scientific enterprise is partly responsible for the dire situation of funding, to the extent that hiring practices are structurally disconnected from operating funding. Even if scientists lobby congress endlessly (and we know that money and influence in lobbying are indeed effective), we lack credibility if we refuse to put our own house in order. As it is, institutions are in direct competition with each other for grants, and increase hiring to improve their chances. This leads to an obvious nation-wide escalation with attending high levels of stress, time wasted on unproductive grant submissions, and high turnover rates of faculty. In fact the system is largely sustainable only through an influx of foreign students, postdocs and job candidates for whom the high failure rates are still preferable to even worse situations in many of their own countries. Although americans and scientists in particular abhor central planning, and it certainly has its risks, the current situation leaves us with a severe lack of credibility. If I were in Congress I would assume that no amount is ever going to be enough, and that scientists are just as venal as every other group lobbying for pork. Our best chances (in the US and in my country, Canada) are to demonstrate a responsible attitude. We are in a near global recession, and now is not the time to lobby for more resources without any show of reasonableness at the same time. A recent international site review of the CIHR (canadian equivalent to the NIH) noted this problem explicitly, and presumably would have the same critique of the US university hiring system.