U.S. Science Agencies Get Some Relief In 2014 Budget

sciencehabit writes "The ghost of former President George W. Bush permeates the 2014 budget that Congress released this week. His presence is good news for physical scientists, but less cheery for biomedical researchers, as Congress reserved some of the biggest spending increases for NASA and the Department of Energy. The National Institutes of Health, meanwhile, got a $1 billion increase that is drawing mixed reviews from research advocates."

Re:Suck it NIH

[i kan reed]

Only if you're willing to put 0% of increases in disease treat-ability down to NIH research. It's hard to look at a person who survived cancer due to an experimental treatment and say "if we let 20 people like you die, we could have gotten an extra satellite in orbit." That's not to say I think NASA doesn't need funding, it does! It's just that NIH as useless is staggeringly unreasonable.

Re:Suck it NIH

[MBGMorden]

I don't think anybody called it "useless". They simply stated that NASA has a better ROI and deserved more of a budget increase.

They didn't DEFUND the NIH. They just gave them less of an increase. The real world isn't binary where it's all or nothing.

Raise Taxes!

[TemperedAlchemist]

And give it all to NASA, pls.

Maybe good news

[Akratist]

Without getting political, if we're going to spend public money on research, energy and space exploration probably make more sense than anything else right now. Oil is eventually going to run out and we will eventually face an extinction threat to the species at some point (yes, true, research into disease might help with the next plague, but there are asteroids, global war, and many other things to consider). A long-term survival strategy is not keeping all of us on this single planet, but rather, spreading out to the stars, and the continuing discovery of earthlike planets is eventually going to lead us to one that is habitable.

Ghost of GWB

[jarich]

Ghost of GWB?

How many years has Obama been in office? Eventually you've got to give him some credit... you know, what with the 2nd term and all....

Re:Ghost of GWB

[Ralph Wiggam]

People always rebut "But the President sends a proposed budget to Congress". Yes, and it's a complete waste of time. Congress takes that proposal, throws it directly in the garbage, and then creates a budget- as is their constitutional power. It has always worked like that and always will.

Re:Suck it NIH

[Anonymous Coward]

2013 NIH budget: $31.3 billion
2007 NIH budget: $30.3 billion

Far from doubling the NIH budget hasn't kept pace with inflation and has been declining in real dollars since 2003. The $8.2 billion (not 10) stimulus largely went to fund existing projects that the previous decade of NIH budgets were too miserly to properly fund. Scientists have become accustomed to having the NIH whack 10% (or more) off of a successful grant application, and when only 18% (officially, though I know of no field getting anywhere near that high) of grant applications get funded there's no end of worthy research that isn't being properly funded.