Expansion fever and soft money plague the biomedical research enterprise

Abstract

Academic biomedical science has had both a long boom in its funding and a subsequent scary bust. From 1970 to 1999, NIH budgets increased 9% per year (1); from 2000 to 2004, they doubled (2, 3). In 2005 came the unmistakable bust: flat-lined NIH budgets converted the doubling into a paltry 14% increase in inflation-corrected (4) dollars over 16 years (1999–2015; Fig. 1 A ). But during the bust, two stealthier dangers escaped notice, their quantitative details and significance masked or denied. Universities recklessly overbuilt laboratories to fill with more scientists, just when the bust removed funding increases they needed to do science. As diminished NIH dollars made research riskier, universities required principal investigators (PIs) to earn high proportions of salary from grants, transferring much of the risk to PIs: Universities in the 1970s paid PIs about 75% “hard” salary from their own coffers; those coffers in the 21st century pay PIs much less, forcing them to corral most salary as “soft” grant money. Universities have recklessly overbuilt laboratories to fill with more scientists, just when lower funding from NIH eliminated the increases they needed to conduct science. Image courtesy of Dave Cutler. As responses to specific circumstances, expansion and soft money seemed innocuous during boom decades, when increasing federal grants and indirect cost recovery (ICR) allowed expansion to pay for itself. Then flat-lined NIH budgets after 2004 turned formerly prudent policies into grave dangers, allowing stagnant funding to combine with ever-expanding research facilities and reliance on soft-money salary to corrode job security and opportunities for academic biomedical scientists. Although external funds remain scarce, research universities must act to protect science from soft money and expansion, both of which they control directly. Can academic institutions rescue biomedical research and the next generation of investigators? Yes, but the task will be hard … [↵][1]1Email: hrbourne{at}gmail.com. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1