NIH’s Knee-Jerk Reversal on Policy for Grants Limitation Raises New Questions       

Less than a few weeks after announcing that it plans to encourage better distribution of funds available for NIH grants, NIH abruptly backed off its announced policy due to a backlash from the affected scientific community, presumably the high rollers who would have been at the receiving end of the cuts. In the previous announcement, NIH had acknowledged that “the distribution of NIH grant funding is highly skewed, with 10 percent of NIH-funded investigators receiving over 40 percent of NIH funding”. Also, it was presented that increased funding doesn’t necessarily means increased productivity. To address this anomaly NIH had announced that funding a grant would be guided by a multi-dimensional scale that would take into account research needs and the associated productivity. That policy seemed well-researched and supported by data collected by NIH showing the benefit of better distribution of grant money. The new announcement again confirms that the “biomedical research workforce is dangerously out of balance” and that NIH plans to address it by adding more grant money so that more funds are available to early- and mid-career researchers. It does not discuss the skewness of the fund distribution except for saying that it got negative comments. The new program, named the Next Generation Researchers Initiative (NGRI), would pull about $210 million from NIH’s base budget “pending availability of funds”.  Further, funds for NGRI would increase to about $1.1 billion per year (or five folds) after five years. There are many open-ended questions that should infuriate any critics of NIH. Why was this not done in the first place? Either the first announcement was half-baked or the new one is. What happens if there is protest from the NIH centers which will now have to cut internal programs to come up with the money needed to support NGRI? Will the NIH again change its policy or go to Congress for additional money? Second, does it mean that NIH has a lot of slush money available that it does not use well? Earlier this year, when the President proposed cutting NIH funding, a lot of noise was made about how disastrous it would be for science. Now somehow NIH not only came up with $210 million out of blue, it also believes it can increase it five folds in 5 years. Does it not sound strange that somehow NIH thinks that it can find this “spare” money to fund additional grants without asking the other grant programs to tighten the belt? It does not add up. Lastly, it really raises serious questions about the credibility of the leaders behind these announcements. It seemed that the previous announcement was made without much consultation with outside experts, which in turn lead to the backlash. The new program was announced so rapidly (in less than 5 weeks after the first announcement), that it does not seem like affected parties were consulted much this time as well. The knee jerk reaction nature of the new announcement coupled with the tongue in cheek concern for new and mid-career researchers should make one concerned that this new program has an uncertain future.