Sidebar: Wrong Number, Please Try Again
But the $1.5 trillion budget request that Congress will soon dissect and rearrange contains some unpleasant surprises for the scientific community. Many agencywide increases are accompanied by cuts in programs that many scientists hold dear, suggesting a showdown later in the year.
One notable example is the proposed $9.37 billion budget for NIH. While 5 percent higher than in 1992, the Bush budget will fund 200 fewer new and competing research project grants than in the current fiscal year. That level--5,797-- not only will increase the already fierce competition for NIH grants among individual investigators, but also flouts the congressional instruction to NIH that it fund at least 6,000 such grants annually.
NIH director Bernadine Healy has warned scientists repeatedly not to use a particular number as a yardstick of the health of NIH's budget. "If R01s [NIH's label for individual investigator-initiated grants] are ...
