Killing science, in pictures

A consortium of professional science societies surveyed over 3700 practicing scientists this summer about the effect of funding declines and the sequester on science and discovery. (I was one of them.)  Their report, Unlimited Potential, Vanishing Opportunity, makes for sobering reading.

First, the loss of funding is certainly exacerbated by the sequester, but has been on-going.  If you look at the graph below, you can see the actual dollars were flatlined until about 2010 and then declined precipitously.  But if you look at "constant 2002" dollars, you can see that the purchasing power has been declining since 2004.  Flat budgets don't keep up with the BRDPI ("BirdPie"), which is the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index. Basically, salaries go up and the cost of research goes up, even if the grant dollars do not. That means fewer people and less science even if the dollars are flat.

Next, let's look at the consequences of that funding loss on actual practicing scientists.  Loss of funding translates to loss of jobs.  Once a project loses staff, it is effectively killed;  you can't pull it out of the freezer and start it up when all the expertise has left.  It's wasteful, it destroys science, it destroys careers.  And it wastes the considerable contribution you, the taxpayer, has made to the previous science.

 Let's be clear, we aren't talking about funding marginal science.   We're talking about work that has passed peer review, and is recommended for funding, but won't get it.

And of course, there's this:

Which reflects the next chart.  yes, the US is alone in major countries in not just flat-lining its investment in science, but reducing it.  While China, Brazil, etc are increasing their investment, and increasing their output.  So we are at risk not only for losing a generation of scientists, but giving up global leadership to other countries.  And once it's gone, it won't come back.

Some conclusions from the report and its press release: 

• Private investment in academic research has been feeble. Only 2 percent of survey respondents have been able to find private funds to make up for those lost from federal grants.

• More than two thirds of survey respondents do not have the funds to expand their research operations, postponing important scientific advances in all fields.

• Research jobs have been lost. Nearly half of survey respondents have laid off researchers and 55 percent have a colleague who has lost his/her job.

• An overwhelming majority of scientists in all fields believes the U.S. has lost its position as the global leader in scientific research.

Good coverage of the report from the Huffington Post, which has been following this story in detail.

Remember the sequester?

Apparently everyone has forgotten the sequester--everyone , that is, meaning the chattering classes. Because those it affects are too unimportant to notice (the poor, the hungry), too unpopular (government employees), or too few or esoteric (researchers and grantees).  The vast middle class is not noticing, because it's not their ox being gored....yet.

But here's a sequester check-in for you.  Government employees are now facing regular furlough days. We have friends in the civil sector of the DoD who are on furlough1 day a week, and wrestling with how to get their work done and pay their bills.  That's a 20% pay cut.   But the expectation is that they will still do all the work, even if they are technically not employed AND not paid.  Really?  How does that work?

Meanwhile, over here in the basic sciences (my own bailiwick), approved grants are taking cuts, regardless of what was approved and budgeted.  So, please, how am I supposed to pay everyone and do the research that was approved, if I don't have the money? We have been cutting back and postponing maintenance etc for years now, with the budget permanently flatlined, but now we are getting further reductions.  There's no fat left to cut.

And, of course, as I've mentioned before, one of my grants wasn't renewed, and maintaining my research team means giving up my summer salary (like many academics, I'm actually only paid for the 9months of the year that school is in session, with my summer income derived from my grants at the rate of pay established by the university).  This is being used to keep my PhD students and staff paid and at work doing basic science.

By the way, none of us is paid particularly well.  (Just as a reality check, a new-minted PhD from a top university is worth in the low-mid $40K as a starting post-doc. )  No one does basic medical research to get rich, believe me.

And fewer will be doing it.  PhD students are fleeing the profession, seeing no jobs and no future.  Current faculty with distinguished records are facing the elimination of their research, and shuttering of their labs.  Beginning faculty are losing their grip on the ladder, unable to get tenure without grants, and leaving entirely.  The dollars that have gone into their research and training are wasted.  And, the ideas that they have, the potential Next Thing, will now never happen.

Singapore, China, and India are increasing their % GDP in basic science.  But the USA is eviscerating it ,in effect saying that we don't want to know anything more and we are happy with the medical care and treatments that we have today.  Because without research, we won't be getting any more.

For a reality check on the cost of the sequester (and a counter to those who say, "no big deal") there's this article (my emphasis)

Sequestration forces the NIH to cut its 2013 budget from $30.7 billion to $29 billion. The first thing to understand here is that research is not like a service: it's hard to cut a cancer study by a little bit, because if you do, you risk destroying its value entirely. There's no way to do three-quarters of an experimental vaccine trial. ...When you cut research money, you can ask current grantees to do a little bit of economising, but past a certain point that would mean destroying the value of ongoing multi-year studies. 

What you do instead is stop initiating new research. NIH says it will give out 700 fewer grants this year.... NIH already rewarded only one out of six grant applications; that ratio has now shrunk to the lowest level ever in the history of the institutes. The budget had already shrunk 22% since 2003 in constant-dollar terms before sequestration. Ultimately, this sort of relentless unrewarding defeatism drives young scientists out of research. 

Naturally, House Republicans aren't planning to let this situation continue. They want to cut NIH's budget even further! The House budget resolution for 2014 cuts the funds available to the committee that allocates NIH's budget by 18.6% below the sequester level.

This makes no sense at all. ...There is no remotely coherent account of structural economic change in which top-end peer-reviewed medical research needs to be a less significant part of our economy. 

But the people who are voting to cut funding for NIH do not have a coherent account of structural economic change, or, as far as I can tell, of anything at all. These people, who incompetently run one of the most detested and least effective institutions in America, Congress, are screwing up institutions that accomplish work of tremendous value for America and all of humanity. It's contemptible.

But, hey, at least Congress doesn't have to suffer delays at the airport.

How the sequester contributes to the decline of American Christianity

The sequester is a failure of ethics, from people who claim precisely the opposite. From the Washington Post op/ed:

Imagine you are taking a Christian ethics class, and as your professor I give you this multiple-choice question on a quiz: ‘Which is more ethical: A) turn away cancer patients from needed chemotherapy treatment, or B) decrease airport delays for the flying public?’.... 

Now, Congress has seen fit to repeal just part of the sequester, the part that affects them, long lines at airports, and their wealthier constituents who fly a lot. But they chose to leave unaddressed the truly morally repugnant results of the sequester such as denying chemotherapy to Medicare patients at some cancer clinics.
....
Repealing the small part of sequestration that affected Congress itself and the donor class, while letting cancer patients go without chemotherapy, seniors go without meals on wheels, pregnant mothers go without nutritional assistance, and children get kicked out of Head Start programs, is a new low in our debased public morality.

Let's remember that the stallwart supporters of the sequester are card-carrying "Christians". And yet, some wonder what the fastest growing religious group is "nones".  My heavens, it's a wonder people aren't running screaming away from what they see as American Christianity.

Derek Penwall:

It strikes me that much of what drives this unenthusiastic response to religion, at least in the case of Christianity, centers on the apparent (at least to observers) unwillingness of Christians to live like Jesus. The "Nones" have heard endlessly about Christianity and how everybody would be better off if the world would just believe the stuff Christians believe...

So, here's the thing: Christians can't just believe stuff. People want an answer to the question: "So what?" They want to know what turns on these much-discussed beliefs, what difference these beliefs make in our lives. Do they help us care for the poor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked or welcome the outcast? Or do these beliefs merely represent a golden barrier that offer protection against blame? 

In short, people who've lost interest in Christianity might just like to see Christians for whom believing "this stuff" is merely the first step to actually living it out.
...
Think about this for a minute, though: What if part of the reason the "Nones" are so underwhelmed by organized religion isn't because they don't find Jesus interesting, but because it appears to them thatChristians don't find him sufficiently interesting enough to take seriously? 

That's what ought to give Christians nightmares.

The Sequester kills: a note from the Reservation

Our good friend the Rev Margaret Watson, who serves on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota,  has posted a heart-felt letter to Congress on her blog. 

The "Sequester" cuts have cut to the bone here on the Reservation. ...they have received no monies since the beginning of March. They are coming to my door asking for heating fuel, food, clothes, diapers. Children are at risk. There are no Tribal programs that can assist these folks, they are mostly disabled, elderly with grandchildren in the home, or are desperate for work.... 

I cannot afford to feed all the people who come to my door asking for help. I have emptied my own freezer, my own cupboard in order to help these desperate folks.
....
In the last six months, I have done 40 funerals --six infants, two teen suicides, and many, many folks under the age 40.

And food, shelter and heat are not the only problems here --the Indian Health Services were also part of the Sequester cuts. And the cuts are affecting the Head Start programs.... 

Have you all become so twisted up in your political lives that you have forgotten the people you have been called to serve?

Go, read the whole thing.  Weep for the suffering people, in the heartland of the "greatest country", at the hands of  Congress.  Share this story widely (this should go viral, people). Send it to your Congress members.  And send  prayers and maybe some material help towards  the Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission in South Dakota.

Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission
c/o Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota
500 S. Main Avenue
Sioux Falls, SD 57104-6814

The Sequester Bites (Updated)

I laughed and laughed when the REpublicans complained that cuts to air traffic controllers and flight delays, due to the FAA cuts under the sequester, were "political". Fleet week in NYC has been cancelled. I'm scrambling to try to fund my laboratory. Did they really believe that their draconian cuts would be arranged as to not inconvenience them?

  The Editorial Board in the NY Times:

As it happens, the sequester law is clear in requiring the F.A.A. and most other agencies to cut their programs by an even amount. That law was foisted on the public after Republicans demanded spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling in 2011. Since then, the party has rejected every offer to replace the sequester with a more sensible mix of cuts and revenue increases. Mr. Boehner is so proud of that strategy that he recently congratulated his party for sticking with the sequester and standing up to the president’s demands for tax increases.

But drastic cuts in spending carry a heavy price. Republicans certainly don’t want voters they care about — including business travelers and those who can afford to fly on vacation — to feel it. They continue to claim that the $85 billion in this year’s sequester can be covered by eliminating waste, fraud, consultants, and the inevitable grant to some obscure science or art project. And, of course, to programs for the poor.

You don’t see any Republican hashtags blaming the president for cutting housing vouchers to 140,000 low-income families, which has begun. ...There aren’t any angry tweets about the 70,000 Head Start slots about to be eliminated.... Or about the cuts to Vista, which is hurting the program that performs antipoverty work in many states. Or the 11 percent cut in unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers.

The voiceless people who are the most affected by these cuts can’t afford high-priced lobbyists to get them an exception to the sequester, the way that the agriculture lobby was able to fend off a furlough to meat inspectors, which might have disrupted beef and poultry operations. And what was cut in order to keep those inspectors on the job? About $25 million from a program to provide free school breakfasts.

This makes me sick.  So yeah, bring it on.  Maybe when there's a plane crash, or a few too many big shots get stuck on the tarmac for 4 hours...maybe THEN there will be some force against the loons in Congress.

Meanwhile, Robert Reich sums it up on Facebook: (my paragraphing)

I'm old enough to remember when there were liberal Republicans who joined with liberal Democrats to do what the nation needed, such as enacting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Environmental Protection Act. 

But the Grand Old Party threw out its liberals and then kicked out its moderates, and is now the party of xenophobes, homophobes, mysogynists, and reactionaries -- who cling to their so-called right to own assault guns but don't give a hoot about the rights of Americans accused of crimes to have lawyers and criminal trials, who are so concerned about fetuses they deny women rights over their own bodies but don't give a damn about babies without adequate nourishment or health care, who refuse equal marriage rights but consider corporations people under the First Amendment, who don't want to close tax loopholes for the very rich but are eager to cut housing vouchers and Head Start for the poor, and who call themselves patriots and wrap themselves in the American flag but don't care enough about the well-being of their fellow Americans to want to finance good schools and adequate heath care for all.

Or as we commented previously, have no compunction about throwing the Constitution out the window when someone mentions the word "Muslim".

With the REpublicans, there is no "there" there.  Michael Tomasky calls them the "immovable party of Nays", and Jonathan Bernstein points out that they are entirely reactionary, and not even pretending to set policy:

Over the last couple of decades, majority parties in the House of Representatives have taken to reserving the very first bill numbers for their party’s agenda. Normally, bills are just numbered in order, when they are introduced: H.R. 637 is usually the bill introduced just after H.R. 636 and just before H.R. 638. But that’s just custom, and at some point a new custom evolved to save H.R. 1 through H.R. 5, and then through H.R. 10, for important party agenda bills. 

Which leads to the embarrassing fact that no one seems to have noticed about this year’s House Republicans. Over 100 days into the current Congress, their agenda is … almost completely empty.

This is no way to govern a country.

Update: GOP And The Sequester: Disingenuous, Naive & Misinformed

It's also amusing because what's happened this week with the FAA has happened before in 1995 and 1996 during the two government shutdowns. Anyone who lived through it will tell you that there was almost instant surprise, shock and anger about the national parks being closed because few realized it would actually happen or believed it when they were warned. 

There are, however, three differences between what's already happened this week and what happened 18 years ago. 

The first is that the White House actually had more discretion in 95-96 than it has today. President Clinton had the authority to exempt critical programs -- like FAA -- from the shutdown. By contract, President Obama has no such power when it comes to the sequester. 

The second is the people who have been affected. In 1995 and 1996 it was campers, hikers and RVers. This week it primarily was salespeople, Wall Streeters and business travelers.
The third is that there was a more or less instant cure for the shutdowns in 95-96 because the problem could be stopped quickly by passing a continuing resolution and reopening the government. This time, the debate will be far harder because the decision has a number of nuances. Are the funds taken from somewhere else to keep the planes flying on time? Should other government services be similarly rescued? Would it be better just to spend more and increase the deficit to restore these services? Will supporters of the other programs that might be cut to pay for FAA et al allow that to happen? 

In the meantime, it's impossible not to see this week's congressional GOP complaints about the sequester either completely disingenuous, incredibly naive or totally uninformed. Of course it's also possible that all three apply at the same time.

Sequester: it gets personal

The bite from the sequester (also known as the Total Fail by Congress to do its job) is starting to hit.  The Huffington Post has a random sample of sequester stories, tales of loss of funding for programs, and layoffs.  Many of these affect education and care for the poor.  There are also military effects (like cancelled naval deployments), and loss of air traffic control.  And, of course, my own personal bailiwick, basic research.

New studies downsize potential job losses because of the federal budget cuts. Agencies have figured ways to ensure that the more alarming effects (no food inspectors!) are avoided. Government organizations are coming up with methods to delay severe disruptions. Congress isn't debating a replacement. The media have lost interest or have reduced it to a political argument. The economy was supposed to be brought to its knees by the $85 billion in cuts. Instead, we trudge along in a new normal. 

This is a dramatic misunderstanding of what's actually happening. The grips of sequestration are just now beginning to be felt and the effects are already quite dramatic. 

....On the national level, sequestration may be defined by canceled White House tours and long lines at airports that never materialized. But on the local level, it is beginning to sting.

Boy is it ever.  In case you don't know, in real life, I'm a professor of science at a large research university.  I do basic cancer research, in addition to all the university roles associated with teaching and administration.  And I like to think that I'm a pretty good scientist.

 But my ability to continue to do science is being dramatically affected first by the steady decline in funding of the National Institues of Health.  The NIH budget is flat lined, which means doesn't even keep up with research inflation:  that is, there is a steady decline in what that same dollar will buy.

We are already in a funding crisis in biomedical research in this country, with record breaking lows in numbers of grants funded.  At a time when Singapore, China, and India are increasing their research investment by as much as 20%,  the US is reducing ours, which will have long term consequences on innovation, economic impact, and health outcomes.

As if that wasn't challenging enough,now there's the additional bite of the sequester. The LA Times reports that California alone may lose $180million in research funds.  Studies suggest that each dollar spent on basic research ferments at least $2.21 of economic activity.  After all, even a modest sized lab like mine hires staff, buys supplies, needs services from machinists to janitors. So that $180million in cuts is nearly $400million in reduced  economic activity in CA.  People are already being laid off.  And that's apart from the knowledge gained or the long-term health benefits.

Over all, the National Institutes of Health is being cut by $1.5billion under sequester.    NIH by far the major funding source for medical and basic biomedical research.

That amount is more than the FY12 funding of $1.491 billion for three major research programs at the National Cancer Institute that study the mechanisms, diagnosis and prevention of cancer. and more than the $1.48 billion budget for the National Institute of Mental Health.

It's ironic.  Right now, I'm doing the best science of my career.  But the chances are better than even that I will not be able to do research much longer. And as well as cutting my pay (part of which depends on grants)  that means students, postdocs, and technicians will be out of a job.

Apparently Grover Norquist and the tea party think that's just peachy.

So, what are you going to do about the mess that is the sequester? Call your Congress person and give them an earful.