When Mitchell Schubert learned last winter that he had won a $710,000 Veterans Affairs grant to study gastric acid secretions, he hired his lab staff, rearranged his teaching calendar, and scheduled his vacation days around his research at the VA Medical Center in Richmond, Va.
So Schubert was more than a little surprised this past spring to get another call from the VA's Office of Research and Development, this one saying he wouldn't be getting money after all. "I wasted most of this year," says Schubert, who has worked two decades at the center. "Without the grant ... the [staff] found work elsewhere. It was very disruptive to my laboratory, this fiasco."
Schubert had become one of many casualties in an ongoing battle over the future of VA-funded research, one that has led to the resignation of a top VA official, the departures of talented VA researchers, and questions about ...
