Grant Reductions. Sigh.

I am not whinging.
ok. maybe a little. But not a lot. Because this has been the accepted deal for most of my NIH grant funded career in science. Grant awards get reduced from the amount that you have requested and the study section has approved as being appropriate for the work as described.
Notice OD-11-077 gives us the current version of the bad news.

Non-Competing Research Awards for All NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) Except the National Cancer Institute (NCI): The FY 2011 appropriation level specified in P.L. 112-10 reduces funding from FY 2010 levels and thus warrants reductions in commitment levels for NIH research grants. Non-modular research grants, from all ICs, with the single exception of NCI, will be reduced to 1 percent below the FY 2010 award level. Future year commitments will be adjusted for inflation based on this revised FY 2011 level, taking into account the policy assumption in the FY 2012 President’s Budget. Modular grants will be reduced to 1 percent below the FY 2010 level and may be reduced by an inflationary adjustment level set by each Institute or Center (up to the level set by that Institute or Center for non-modular research grants). The adjusted FY2011 award level will also be the new base for future year commitments.

(NCI is starting with a 3% base hit, btw)
So…what does this mean?

Well, 1% is not so bad, really. If you had a $250,000 modular award, you’d only be losing $2,500. Chump change. But see that little bit about additional adjusters? Well, one of my favorite ICs seems to be handing out 3% “adjustments” to noncompeting continuation…so we’re talking $7,500. That’s the staff raises, right there.
And guess what? If you’ve been around the block awhile you will recognize that the odds are good that you already took a ~10% adjustment last year. So really you are down to $218,250 or nearly $32,000 off your original budget.
Not chump change at all. This is most of the cost of a tech, grad student or postdoc.
Which you may have hired, in your naivete, upon original funding of the award if you were so lucky as to get the full budget from the start. Or even if you took your 10% / 1-module cut originally, you probably still hired the person, after all the staff members are the engine of the research.
This has implications for my readers and their usual concerns. Postdocs, if you are wondering why your PI “has all those grants” and isn’t handing out generous raises to the tune of a few grand per person, this may be why. Small lab PIs if you are wondering why those “well funded” labs are ever submitting more grants…do the math. Sally Rockey put up some numbers showing a big majority of NIH funded PI’s have 2 or fewer grants and even the “well funded” category have 2-3 grants. Assume those are full modular R01s that have had the above mentioned reductions. Three grants, three reductions to the tune of $32,000 each and you are well into the territory of, you guessed it, another grant. Maybe an R21, but certainly larger than an R03. And the R21 is only for two years so….
“…ahh, screw it, we might as well just write another R01”
I can’t really argue against the way the NIH uses budget reductions so that they can fund more grants. And when you look at it 9 grants at a time, these minor nicks to established investigators so that you can fund that 10th award to some poor New Investigator does look pretty attractive.
But there is little doubt that it contributes to the psychological pressure for the better-funded labs to keep those grant applications going out and to keep seeking more and more awards. As with the decreasing odds of getting the competitive continuation application funded on time, at first submission, this contributes to the uncertainty and instability. Which leads to more submissions. And decreasing success rates. And, one assumes, more tyranny of the rich-getting-richer.
I don’t know how to break the cycle so I don’t have any brilliant advice for the NIH.
Instead, I’m going to sent in another grant proposal….