The News & Observer by Ned Barnett
If you want to know what cutting scientific research grants will do, don’t listen to President Trump or to his reckless and feckless efficiency czar, Elon Musk.
Listen to someone who knows, someone like Jean Cook, professor and chair of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her lab is exploring cell proliferation dynamics. It’s crucial work that could slow aging, speed healing and improve treatments for cancer, but the Trump administration could stymie that work in the name of false savings.
“In my own lab, I already have multiple projects waiting in the wings that we can’t even start yet because we can’t afford the personnel and costs of experiments. If we had even less funding, I won’t be able to recruit into the positions that become open when students graduate or postdocs move on,” Cook said. “That means those existing projects stall and may or may not get finished depending on how long it takes to find funding again.”
Trump, apparently taking a page from the conservative blueprint for his administration, Project 2025, wants grants issued by the National Institutes of Health to include no more than 15% to cover “indirect costs.” Those costs include such overhead expenses as rent, utilities, equipment maintenance and support staff. The cap could reduce federal funding for indirect costs by 50 percent or more.
As the News & Observer’s Brian Gordon reported this week, Duke and UNC, the state’s two largest recipients of NIH funds, received a combined $1.2 billion from the agency in 2023. In terms of overall research-and-development spending by universities in 2023, UNC and Duke ranked 9th and 11th nationally.
Supposedly, Trump and Musk want to cap indirect research expenses to increase government efficiency, but they won’t make much headway squeezing NIH grants. The agency’s spending on medical research represents less than 1% of federal spending.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s new cap on indirect costs, thanks to a lawsuit filed by attorneys general in 22 states, including North Carolina.
Peter Hans, president of the 16-university UNC System, said the value of “funding life-saving discoveries and supporting thousands of jobs” should become clear as the debate over efficiency and results unfolds.
“I urge patience while the issue is addressed,” he said, “and I’m hopeful this will ultimately produce a healthy conversation about the benefits of university research to America’s competitiveness while ensuring accountability to the taxpayers.”
Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat representing much of Wake County and many constituents involved in university research, promised to fight the cuts.
“The administration’s attempt to slash NIH funding for these institutions is disgraceful,” Ross said in a statement. “It wouldn’t just hurt our universities and our local economy – the ultimate victims of President Trump’s cuts would be patients and their families. While thankfully, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the devastating damage these funding cuts would cause, this fight is far from over.”
As UNC officials hope the Trump administration will see reason and Democrats rail against stalling the research engine, Cook said the mood among medical researchers is “very gloomy and anxious.”
“We already spend so much mental energy tackling challenging scientific and biomedical questions,” she said. “Adding worry about our ability to continue the work, train new innovative researchers and build knowledge that helps patients makes it so much harder.”
Trump ran on a promise to lower the price of groceries. Instead he’s raising anxiety among scientists and risks to patients.
Link to full article: https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article300168614.html