These are the proposed budget cuts from the house and senate according to the March 8 2011 issue of Nature,
According to one scientist in the Nature article,
"It's a time of great uncertainty and the [scientific] community is very concerned," says John Marburger, vice-president for research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. At his university, researchers continue to put in proposals for federal funding, but they worry that a tighter budget will reduce success rates. Marburger, who was science adviser to former president George W. Bush, has spoken out against the cuts proposed by House Republicans. Postdocs and graduate students, who, he estimates, make up 80% of researchers supported by federal grants, will be hit hardest. "It will put people out on the streets."
It seems as if the partisan fight is at a stalemate and the federal government may shutdown. And the research arm of NIH at Bethesda Maryland is acting all James Bond about it. I read this at ScienceInsider
NIH Deputy Director for Intramural Research Michael Gottesman e-mailed ScienceInsider yesterday that each of NIH's 27 institutes and centers is identifying people who would be "excepted" from the shutdown. That includes clinical staff; fire, security, and animal care personnel; and a few employees "who are protecting research investments."
But the details are sketchy. Any public discussion of the contingency plans is forbidden "for political reasons," says one high-level official, explaining that the government can't look like it's preparing for a shutdown. Even internal e-mails are now verboten, this source said; instead, planning has been done the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth.
You can read the rest here.
3 comments:
Well from someone 'in the field', this sucks. My buddies are postponing their experiments, everyone's planning to take as work as they can do back home, and we're all wondering how stringent they're going to be about keeping us off campus (it's likely that we won't be able to get on campus unless we have animals to take care of). I'm going to flip all of my flies on Friday and hope for the best.
Unfortunately this has been kind of a mess, as every looming gov't shutdown announcement has led to cancelled experiments and much frustration. I'm somewhat lucky that my current focus has been computational - and I just bought a decent-ish PC for my home - but it's still going to be a huge disruption :-(
@Carlo
It's crazy that they won't even allow researchers to access work email. I know from experience some experiments need day to day attention if they don't get that, months even years of work can be lost. I can only imagine the frustration. Thanks for reporting to us first hand!
Ri.di.cu.lous. Seriously. Ridiculous! I suggest we just get rid of everyone currently in Congress and start fresh in 2012. Who's with me? :-)
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