Budget Increase For NIH Won't Meet Expectations

WASHINGTON--The 6 percent increase requested for the National Institutes of Health in 1992 would provide enough funds to support 632 more research grants but not enough, say science policy analysts, to put federally supported biomedical research on firm financial footing. Given the sorry state of the economy and the huge federal deficit, scientists as well as members of Congress are praising the president's proposed $8.78 billion NIH budget as a step in the right direction. But agency officials say it's not large enough to allow them to fund at least 6,000 new grants each year, a goal that Congress has urged NIH to adopt and that many researchers feel is vital to the continued health of academic biomedical science (The Scientist, Sept. 3, 1990, page 1; and Jan. 7, 1991, page 6). During the past decade, NIH has stretched its research dollar by levying across-the-board cuts, called downward negotiations, on grants already approved for funding. Each year the average percentage cut has risen, reaching nearly 15 percent last year. At that point, Congress issued a call to stop this practice. NIH officials have complied. From now on, says acting NIH director William Raub, the agency plans to rely more heavily on the peer review process to help it make ends meet. Data generated by congressional staff suggest that study sections, scientists invited to review grant proposals, tended to make bigger cuts in budgets when they knew the grants were not going be reduced further by NIH administrators. The hope is that the elimination of these unilateral cuts will cause study sections to revert to their former practice. Scientists say they welcome the idea of having their grants reduced by their peers before any funding is approved, instead of having to deal with cuts over the course of the grant. "At least then you know what you're dealing with," says Robert Schimke, a molecular biologist at Stanford University and former president of the American Society of Biochemists and Molecular Biologists. "The study sections are in a position to more or less have a better feel for what it takes to do the research," Schimke says. "So I'd prefer to see the study sections do it than somebody else." Data show they are capable of doing so. According to one analysis, in 1980 study sections reduced proposal budgets by about 16 percent. By 1990 that figure had shrunk to less than 3 percent. At the same time, the across-the-board cuts by NIH rose from about 3 percent in 1980 to more than 11 percent in 1990. However, NIH officials say those numbers may exaggerate the impact of downward negotiations on study section behavior. The congressional study counted all proposals received by the agency, but Donald Luecke, deputy director of NIH's Division of Research Grants, believes that one should look only at grants that were approved for funding. Such an analysis, he says, shows that study sections trimmed budgets an average of 22 percent in 1980 and an average of 12 percent in 1990. Other factors besides downward negotiations may account for the change in the amount of trimming done by study sections, adds Luecke. Traditionally, the best-written proposals tend to be cut the least. And with funding rates for NIH grant proposals declining, he notes, that factor becomes more important. Those points lead Luecke to conclude that, even without downward negotiations, "it's not likely we will achieve the kind of reductions that were seen in 1980." Adds David Moore, executive secretary of the Ad Hoc Group For Medical Research Funding, a coalition of 150 health and research organizations: "We believe the study sections are trimming the budgets as much as they can already." So while NIH says it can support almost 22,000 grants, perhaps with no across-the-board cuts, that goal may not be attainable. Plus, the emphasis on boosting the number of grants may have come at expense of other programs. The budget for training increased by just $8.3 million, or 2.7 percent, and construction and instrumentation programs have also suffered. "We may have solved the problem for this year, but what does that do for the enterprise five years from now?" asks Moore. "There needs to be increases across the board." While Moore and others urge scientists to lobby for a bigger NIH budget, some on Capitol Hill say that things could be a lot worse. "It's very, very narrow-minded to see this as a negative budget," warns one congressional staff member. "I think they should be advocates [for biomedical research], but I don't think they should complain."

Budget Increase For NIH Won't Meet Expectations

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