Bio research needs buildings. Electricity, heat, lights need to be on in those buildings and they need maintenance. Labs need equipment and often very specialized and expensive space. Not to mention someone needs to do accounting, payroll, taxes, immigration, maintenance, legal, ethics, etc. And all of these people need facilities, offices, computers, etc. Just like any corporation!
These are indirect costs. You cannot do research without them.
What's going to happen if the government cuts off most indirect costs is that we're going to be forced to do research that can be covered by those costs.
So, no, more money isn't going to go to better research. It's going to go to much worse research and it will be a massive waste.
Instead of doing the best research I can, I'll need to think about the lowest overhead projects so that my department doesn't go bankrupt. That means taking no risks, avoiding new data collection, not starting up anything radically new that might not have an immediate payoff, etc. That's a bad deal for everyone!
Good scientists don't want to do bad research. The best will leave.
This will destroy the lead that the US has in science and technology over the rest of the world. Never mind kill countless people who would have been saved by new treatments.
> What's going to happen if the government cuts off most indirect costs is that we're going to be forced to do research that can be covered by those costs.
The whole debate is whether 15% indirect costs is sufficient or whether it needs to be 30%+. Without a doubt universities are bloated and many don’t invest appropriately in their facilities — but where is the appropriate line?
Unfortunately, you didn’t add to that debate: you assumed the conclusion and then catastrophized based on your assumption. That exact style of argumentation is what makes people distrust that 30%+ really is needed — because nobody itemizes how, they just immediately resort to shaming and emotional manipulation.
> That means taking no risks, avoiding new data collection, not starting up anything radically new that might not have an immediate payoff, etc.
That’s compounded by all your personal examples of how this impacts you being direct costs — which have greater funding, with this change. And your claim that you can no longer do them dubious at best.
This thinking is completely backward. If there is an established threshold, and you want to change it, it is on you to do the homework to determine that the lower threshold will be sufficient and won't cause harm. It's not the responsibility of the people currently doing research (the way they've done so for years) to justify the current threshold.
They looked at a handful of cherry picked charities that love to donate to high profile projects. Universities subsidize these grants internally to get other donations!
When I get money from say the Gates foundation, they are almost always topping up existing research not doing something new. On a high profile topic donors are attracted to.
These cherry picked foundations also give very little money; well under 1% of what we bring in. So the lack of indirect costs has a minor effect on the system that gets balanced by other well meaning donors.
Had they looked at other grants they would have seen that the indirect costs are in line with what NIH was paying. The bulk of other grants includes NSF, DARPA, ONR, etc.
Or they could have asked, when a corporation gives a university money, what do they think is a reasonable overhead rate? Because we don't accept money from for profit entities at anything less than the full overhead rate. And corporations pay it because it's reasonable. That's because they fund a lot of research and because they aren't a charity we would subsidize with other donations.
Or they could ask. When a corporation gets an NIH grant, what are their indirect costs? Are university indirect costs in line? After all everyone needs to keep the lights on.
Corporations are not subject to the cap at all! They can get a grant and charge 100% overhead. This only applies to universities. The government could not give a biotech company a grant with 15% overhead, no company would ever take it.
I have seen the indirect costs that some major corporations charge. 100% is low for them! And the government pays it. In every single contract with industry.
Except for universities. That they single out to dry to drive into insolvency.
So no. They didn't look at other grants. They could have computed countless statistics against tens of millions of grants for hundreds of billions of dollars. They picked the most elite nice small charities that give out a few hundred grants that we fund ourselves for the most bleeding heart projects.
> You only listed peer government grant agencies — which people believe have similar problems to NIH.
No. I also gave two other options.
Get the overhead rate of corporations from government contracts.
Or get the overhead rate that corporations pay to universities, just like the government.
> And the same people generally believe that’s also full of fraud and waste. So what’s your argument?
So then compare overhead rates in commercial contracts between corporations.
> So why don’t you do that, to prove them wrong? It sounds really easy.
Oh yes. I will send NIH, Musk, and Trump a letter, they will realize the error of their ways and change course. Come on. Now you aren't discussing things in good faith.
Although for the record major universities, including mine, have already written such letters to the administration. Much good that did.
All of these numbers are publicly available. Feel free to look them up. It's bread and butter economics.
But no. This isn't about proving anyone wrong. These people don't care about right or wrong. We are so past that. This is about their attempt to break the system. The fallout of which will be disastrous.
The impact of the wholesale dismantlement of our research capacity won't be seen by the average person for a while. Maybe a good 10 to 20 years. Then slowly you'll notice that all of the new companies, medicines, etc. have a different language on them, their names sound a bit foreign, that foreign stock markets are getting attractive, and that someone else is getting rich instead of us.
Restarting research will be nearly impossible. Europe has been trying to restart its research enterprise for more than half a century and the US still dominates despite massive EU investment. The biggest winner will be China who is paying a lot to attract researchers.
Discussions with university researchers I know personally indicated an inappropriate amount was going to the university at large, rather than project funding.
These are indirect costs. You cannot do research without them.
What's going to happen if the government cuts off most indirect costs is that we're going to be forced to do research that can be covered by those costs.
So, no, more money isn't going to go to better research. It's going to go to much worse research and it will be a massive waste.
Instead of doing the best research I can, I'll need to think about the lowest overhead projects so that my department doesn't go bankrupt. That means taking no risks, avoiding new data collection, not starting up anything radically new that might not have an immediate payoff, etc. That's a bad deal for everyone!
Good scientists don't want to do bad research. The best will leave.
This will destroy the lead that the US has in science and technology over the rest of the world. Never mind kill countless people who would have been saved by new treatments.