Yesterday, tens of thousands of people across the United States and the world marched in support of scientific research at the March for Science. This march took place almost exactly a month after President Trump revealed his budget request to Congress. Trump’s budget included startling cuts to nearly all scientific research agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH is the largest biomedical research organization in the world. NIH directly employs over 5,000 of the world’s smartest biomedical researchers, and through scientific grants, is the backbone for biomedical research across the country. The graph on the left shows the operating budget of the NIH from 1994 to today (inflation adjusted), including the effect of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Trump’s proposed $6+ billion cut. The negative consequences of Trump’s proposal are frankly hard to overstate. To start, there would be no funding available for new grants in fiscal year 2018. No money would be allocated to study healthcare quality. And a program vital to fostering international collaboration would be eliminated. As Kathy Hudson, a former deputy director at NIH put it to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “The nation would lose research and researchers in a way that would not be recoverable.”
For the Data Wonks
- The American Association for the Advancement of Science (the world’s largest scientific organization and publisher of the premier journal Science) has provided details about Trump’s proposed cuts to science funding and the disastrous negative impacts that those cuts would have here & here.
- National Institutes of Health budgets from 1994 were downloaded from the NIH Office of Budget website.
- Details on the effect of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) on NIH funding was collected from the Congressional Research Service here.
- Inflation adjustments made based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items downloaded from here.
- For more information about the positive effects of NIH research on society look at the NIH impact summary.
Data on the Rocks 