Op-Ed: A Close Look at the Reckless Assault on Medical Research by Musk and Trump

A non-partisan scientist deconstructs and demystifies how U.S. government funding has fueled history's most extraordinary scientific experiments and discoveries

By Evan D. Morris Quillette

To understand how biomedical scientists feel as they watch Donald Trump and Elon Musk aim their bazookas at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recall how you felt when the Taliban aimed their bazookas at the 1,500-year-old Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan. “Senseless” may be one word that springs to mind. “Permanent” might be another.

But the destruction of NIH is in many ways worse than the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

The Buddhas were an astounding feat of architecture and sculpture and devotion. But there were just two of them. NIH contains 27 institutes and centers, each of which specializes in the research and cure of a whole class of diseases. The work of these institutes occurs, in part, at NIH proper, but the bulk of the work occurs at universities (the so-called “extramural” program) funded through grants.

This collective research builds on continuing advances in every field of medicine as well as chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, biology, and more.

The American biomedical science enterprise, which has eradicated polio, created artificial organs, and mapped the genome to identify the root causes of disease, is the greatest collective accomplishment of human beings in the history of the world. Once derailed, it will take a very long time to recover.

Musk has pointed his bazookas at two longstanding practices, the disruption of which is causing a great deal of havoc and despair among university-based scientists: the indirect costs and the grant-review committees (also known as “Study Sections”).

Indirect costs are negotiated between the individual universities and the federal government. These rates account for the federal monies that accompany each grant but do not go to the scientist. Rather, they go to the universities to create and maintain the environments that host and facilitate the research. Colloquially, but inadequately, they are said to be for “keeping the lights on.”

Study sections—which have largely been shuttered since late January—are the groups of (thirty or so) expert peer reviewers who review each grant proposal that comes into NIH on a given topic. Peer review is how science exercises quality control. In normal times, each study section meets three times a year for two gruelling days of review, discussion, argument, and compromise.

I served on a study section for four years in my area of expertise—brain imaging and addiction. It generally took me two months prior to each meeting to review the eight or ten proposals that were assigned to me each review cycle.

All senior scientists are expected to serve at least one four-year term. There is no compensation. Out of the study-section meetings, scores emerge for each grant proposal. At a later meeting of its leaders (the “council”), each institute decides how many of the top-scoring grant proposals on topics that relate to its mission to fund.

How indirect costs are key to science. The indirect costs do not only “keep the lights on.” They pay for all types of infrastructure intended to serve the scientific research effort. For instance, there are special NIH grants for $2 million dollars to purchase and make new “high end, shared instrumentation” like the latest brain scanner available to all investigators using brain imaging in their research.

But the scanner actually costs $3 million. And the renovation to the building to accommodate it costs another $2 million. These additional costs must be covered by a dean or president of a large research university—with indirects. Without that new brain scanner, a leading center for brain imaging, like Yale, would not be able to maintain its lead.

Leading centers attract leading researchers. The synergy between them is what drives the best biomedical research and discoveries. Indirects also support staff and administrators. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Applying for a grant from the NIH and then managing it is a massive undertaking.

The grants themselves run into hundreds of pages. They include science but also detailed budgets, data-sharing plans, ethics documents, and documentation of relevant resources. “Pre-award” staff and administrators are essential to my getting the grant in the first place. It is why professors at Yale get the most competitive grants and professors at UVM or Howard University or your local college do not.

Why Study Sections are key to science. Uncertainty and interruption of studies can kill them. Most scientific studies last between three and five years. But they are also years in the making.

It takes an average of two years to get an NIH grant from the time it is first submitted to the time it is funded. Delays now will impact my ability to continue my research a year or two from now. For many of us in biomedical research (tenured, full professors), we rely nearly 100 percent on grants for our salaries (at Yale, it’s 95 percent).

The grants also support 100 percent of the salaries of research staff (students, postdocs, junior faculty) and 100 percent of our research costs.

Most investigators must keep three to five funded projects going simultaneously to stay afloat and cover “payroll” for our teams. We are constantly writing new grant applications to keep the work going.

If there is an unexpected delay (as there is now), we will have to abort our work in the middle of the projects. We will have to lay off our staff and ourselves. We have no salaries from the university to fall back on. The data that we have acquired but not yet completed will be inadequate to test our hypotheses and is likely to be unpublishable.

We will not be able to discharge our obligations to the taxpayers who funded us or to the subjects who volunteered to take part in our studies.

Riches at elite universities. It is true that riches are concentrated at a few elite universities. Especially for big science. The costly infrastructures that rely, in part, on the continued flow of large indirect payments from NIH or other government-funding agencies tend to be concentrated at a minority of elite universities. These are, in effect, the Manhattan Projects of the 21st century.

But that is the nature of the beast.

It is more efficient to have a few well-funded centers than to have a lot of inadequately funded ones. Take away the indirect funds from Yale and distribute them to 100 colleges and small universities around the US, and you won’t get 100 small centers for brain imaging.

You’ll get none.

The public gets the most bang for its buck by having a limited number of Manhattan Projects. Why they happen to be located at certain centers is mostly historical, not political.

What’s behind the disruptions. If there is a rationale for the current disruption to NIH-funded science, it seems to be a desire to prevent the funneling of science funding to non-science initiatives.

That is, to prevent money intended by Congress for science research from being used instead for political or social-engineering purposes. So: eliminate those purposes. I agree with that goal. The people deserve to have their science budget spent on science—by the best scientists working in the best environments.

When people go to the U.S. Open tennis tournament, they don’t go to see the number one seed forced to play doubles with the number sixteen seed just for the sake of “equity.” They go to see the best doubles team in the world battle it out with the second best because they want to see the best tennis.

I have written previously about the wrong-headedness of being forced to use grant money budgeted for research to pay for maternity leave. The universities or the states who mandate this coverage should pay for it themselves with other monies. They should keep their hands out of my research pockets.

But frustration with DEI or any other social program is no reason to damage scientific research in the process. Why destroy my career and the careers of those who work for me?

The responsibility of universities. What we all want to know is how much of the indirect monies that come with our grants go to maintaining people and programs that are not part of the research effort.

Is the money going to DEI or some other political effort to promote people or recruit them or favor them just for their immutable characteristics instead of for their scientific expertise or other relevant qualifications?

I don’t know, and my fellow faculty members don’t know either. The universities are not transparent about the money flow. If they were willing to show us an accounting of the indirect funds and an argument for how they were used to maintain and build the relevant scientific infrastructure, I could go to the mat for them. But then, I might also learn other facts that would diminish my willingness to defend my employer.

The responsibility of individual faculty. There is no reason to punish scientists who do science untainted by politics. Even if they do it at elite universities, surrounded by elite colleagues. There is especially no good reason to harm the efforts of scientists who have laboured to maintain high standards of research and training in the face of pressure to become politicised or to lower standards.

If these scientists bear any responsibility for the current crisis, it is only for their historical inability to make what they do understood by the public.

Manhattan Projects are very expensive. The public gets a lot for their money. But the less they understand the connections between their taxes and their medical care and quality of life, the more fertile the ground is for sowing anti-science and anti-elite disruption. Consider this essay an attempt by one scientist to make amends.

Evan D Morris, PhD, was on the faculty of Indiana and Purdue Universities, prior to his current post a Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale, Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine focused on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. Subscribe here.

Image. Elon Musk, son X and Donald Trump in Oval Office last month (Yahoo).