Hello, I submitted this. Thanks for your concern. I've been lurking on Hacker News since ~2014 when I was in college. I made an account and started posting because people on the board have something of an interest in biology and genetics (for example this story on cancer detection from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43035147 ) and I wanted to contribute. I posted this because the NIH funds a lot of research related to that and this story reports on a massive change to the NIH, which seemed worthy of discussion.
"Having 50% of their grant leeched off" is not how indirects work.
You know what's a much bigger problem for people doing research? That the budget for a non-modular R01 from the NIH hasn't changed since the Clinton administration.
When the government hires a consultant, the rate charged is usually 2-3x the salary of that consultant; 50% is well below the 100-200+% rates you see all the time in business.
This is a huge cut. Back of the envelope calculations for UCLA (a big research university with public finance information): $200M cut in operating revenue.
In 2023, UCLA had $270M in indirect costs [1] and they negotiated a rate of 57% with the NIH [2]. So, they had about $473M in direct costs. The new rate would be 15%, which is ~$71M. $270M-$71M = $200M.
This is a huge cut. Back of the envelope calculations for UCLA (a big research university with public finance information): $200M cut in operating revenue.
In 2023, UCLA had $270M in indirect costs [1] and they negotiated a rate of 57% with the NIH [2]. So, they had about $473M in direct costs. The new rate would be 15%, which is ~$71M. $270M-$71M = $200M.
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