OSTP on the NIH - Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Institutes of Health

Science News, June 8, 1985

Congress approved funding for 6,500 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants for fiscal year 1985, but the Reagan administration has been trying retroactively to pare that number down to 5,000 (SN:2/9/85, p.85). In the May 30 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, Presidential Science Adviser George A. Keyworth II and Bernadine Healy of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) claim the concern with numbers clouds more important issues.

Before fiscal '85, they note, the funding of 5,000 new grants a year as traditional. Congress's habit of earmarking funds for specific research has also lent to the perception that grants are shrinking, and has had the effect of force feeding some programs for political reasons, while better science goes unfunded. All this talk about budget uncertainties, they say, may scare young people away from careers in biomedical research.