Trump policy capping NIH indirect costs at 15% will cripple biomedical research

Malthusians always get angry when the other party co-opts its depopulation schemes.

 

If it’s not absolute that would imply that things could be done without government funding and if that were the case then why do we have this thread?

 

I don’t understand this. Do you think overhead costs don’t exist? That they are like viruses? Maybe my reading is different, but my interpretation would be that if the cost of 1 study is $100,000 and the overheads were $50,000 and “direct research” $50,000 - the total grant would be capped at $65,000 due to the limit on overhead. This would represent a loss in research funding in this scenario, not that more money gets “shifted to researchers”.

At UF the avg overhead on grant research is apparantly 52.5%. I’m at a loss how you conclude this is a “win” to researchers when it clearly means the opposite.

 

there is always a "chance" you libs will be correct- Trump is pretty smart and I suspect this too will be successful

 

You are using another absolute in insinuating that things can be done without government money. Things are already done in combination with government funding. Ever heard of the American Cancer society? They also help to fund cancer research.

Private business also funds research but typically not the fundamentals. For example, you won't find many pharmaceutical companies wasting money on studying the impact of drugs on mice in many cases it's necessary to determine if it's a worthwhile investment to study against humans.

You won't find any private business funding a space probe to the moon or beyond yet the amount of technical discoveries because of that government investment is too long to count. A CAT scan is something that comes to mind.

 

Private non profits were the major funders of research in the 19th and early 20th but their focus was often very narrow. Only as we progressed later into the 20th did their scope get broader.

 

Post World War II, the modern research funding system started. Basically, government provided the bulk of support for research and then private foundations and companies would provide small chunks of it. Over time, the government share has declined to just over half of the funding. As people correctly pointed out, drug companies and the like are major funders of applied research (if your research is developing a drug, they will likely play a major role once it becomes obvious that there is money to be made here). But this will dry up funding for things that are important but not necessarily profitable, including a lot of innovations that actually save money.

The most likely outcome will be that a country like China will realize the tremendous opportunity and poach the best researchers.

 

I want to be clear - there is a ton of money spent in the private sector on r&d. https://www.researchamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/ResearchAmerica-Investment-Report.Final_.January-2022-1.pdf

but all of that is applied research and you’d be shocked how much of that applied research can trace origins back to grant funded university labs doing basic research. University grant funded research is the current bedrock of most biological science and biopharma industries.

Now, it is possible that with this change other sources of funds could come in and fill the gap, but such a transition takes years and will be painful and all research will suffer significantly in the mean time. Not to mention potentially catastrophic downstream effects in industry, and also the U.S. would lose its position as the world leader on research education - and if you think that doesn’t matter imagine us citizens being forced to travel abroad to learn how to do research. Currently most of the world comes here to learn those skills.

 

Private research expects a return on their investment. Publicly funded research done at universities, the knowledge gained is the goal.

Drug companies don't do research on basic chemical compounds because 99% of them go nowhere. And out of the 1% that has possible benefits, they still need to go through trial phases. Pharmaceutical companies, which are all for profit, don't fund the basic compound testing. It's a money loser over 99% of the time.

The equipment needed to test these compounds are not cheap to buy. Not cheap to run, and not cheap to maintain. It's going to take more than 15% of any grant. And either all this primary research ends up off shore, or doesn't get done. And eventually, the Pharmaceutical companies are going to use their lobby to change things.

 

Only the charges weren't BS. Multiple grand juries found that there was evidence of probable cause that Trump had committed crimes. Between a personal Supreme Court that decided he should have the sovereign immunity of the King in an absolute monarchy, a personal judge who slow walked the case against him using a dubious legal rationale and the fact that enough voters decided that the prices of groceries was so high that anything else about him didn't matter he got away with multiple crimes.

 

You realize that you are talking about the guy who didn't figure out that eliminating the de minimis rule would cause millions of packages to back up at airports until it happened, right?

 

Glad to see us getting the thread back on track, that is Trump Criminal.

It’s pretty bleeding obvious that scores of millions of Americans we’re thumbing their noses at the lawfare system.

 

The moniker "Make America Great Again" for Trump's movement is the ultimate oxymoron and this is just another example of a Trump policy decision that will make American a second rate power. His foreign policy has been an abdication of America's role as leader of the free world, this decision will be an abdication of America's role as a leader in biomedical research. Said it many times going to back to 2016 or even 2015 perhaps the most dangerous characteristic of Donald Trump is that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. The guy is incredibly ignorant, thinks that he is a stable genius and his followers unquestionably worship him as if he was the leader of cult.

 

You leftists and your power trip. I’m prepared to argue that the world would be a better place if the U.S. was only a second rate power.

 

Smart guys don't use sharpies to change the path of a hurricane

He's talked about nuking hurricanes in the past. Let's just hope he's not dumb enough to actually try it this time

 

That is not at all what will happen. There isn't a strong negative correlation between importance and the facility use. In fact, the correlation is probably positive and becoming more so as we move into the world of AI.

BTW, the study of shrimp and how they reacted metabolically to water pollution was an NSF study, not an NIH study and wouldn't be affected. In fact, that study likely spent most of its funding on direct costs, as the treadmills cost about $1,000 total, but they needed to pay for people to monitor performance.

So instead of cutting shrimp on treadmills, you will be cutting massive computing studies on the genetic nature of cancer that can lead to new treatments down the road.

 

I wouldn’t be shocked if genetic research revealed something like, “Oh S***! We’ve been killing people all along!”

 

some private Money follows NIH money or supplements NIH money.

 

What’s it called when you claim to know everything?
Stinkin libbies.