MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Starting today, universities and other institutions doing medical research will lose out on billions of dollars of federal funding. This after the Trump administration changed a key rule in the way the National Institutes of Health allocates grants. And that is just one of several recent moves to control funding for scientific research. Here to explain, I'm joined by NPR science correspondent Jon Lambert. Welcome.
JON LAMBERT, BYLINE: Hello.
KELLY: And NPR health correspondent Rob Stein. Hi, Rob.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Rob, you kick us off. I want to understand this new NIH policy. This has to do with funding medical research at universities, at med schools, research hospitals. What exactly is new?
STEIN: So late on Friday, the NIH announced a huge change in how the world's largest public funder of biomedical research pays to find new cures for everything from cancer and heart disease to diabetes. The NIH is capping how much the agency pays for what's called indirect costs at 15%, and that's far lower than what the NIH had been paying. There's a big range, but the administration says it can exceed 50 or 60% at some universities.
Indirect costs cover things that are essential for doing medical research, like, you know, paying to maintain buildings and literally paying for the electricity to keep the lights on in the labs. And I think it's fair to say that it hit like a bomb when it was announced, especially 'cause it was announced late on a Friday and went into effect the next business day - today. Let's listen to Jo Handelsman. She runs the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
JO HANDELSMAN: Cutting the rate to 15% will destroy science in the United States. This change will break our universities, our medical centers and the entire engine for scientific discovery.
KELLY: Destroying science - she is not mincing words there.
STEIN: Yeah.
KELLY: Does everyone agree with that assessment, Rob?
STEIN: Well, that's certainly the overwhelming sentiment of most of the folks involved in medical research that I've been talking to, as well as many Democrats in Congress and even some Republicans. But there certainly are others who disagree and agree with the president that the federal government is just paying too much for these indirect costs, especially because many universities have huge endowments, and private foundations pay far less. Here's Carl Schramm. He's an economist at Syracuse University who studies scientific funding.
CARL SCHRAMM: University endowments have grown so enormously. I think the federal government is basically saying, why don't you put some of your skin in this game?
STEIN: And, you know, I've talked to some who've argued that this could force universities to cut some of the bloat in their bureaucracies and maybe even end up providing more money for actual research. In fiscal year 2023, 9 billion of the $35 billion the NIH spent on research grants went to indirect costs.
KELLY: I want to broaden this out a little bit because there are also changes to science funding beyond NIH. Jon, get us up to speed. What is going on at the National Science Foundation?
LAMBERT: It's been a tumultuous few weeks at the agency. The biggest moves have been Trump's executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion measures across the government. And these really hit hard at the heart of NSF's mission. Since the 1990s, Congress has mandated that they weigh grants in part on their intellectual merits and in part on how they will broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in science.
KELLY: Since the '90s - and why was that?
LAMBERT: Basically, there's a lot of evidence that this helps science work better and ultimately gives the taxpayer more bang for their buck. But the Trump administration is essentially saying that they can't do that, and this is building off longstanding criticisms from the right. Senator Ted Cruz, for instance, has long railed against the NSF, saying that they fund research that promotes, quote, "neo-Marxist perspectives" that he says detract from so-called hard science. And for now, it seems like the NSF is siding with the Trump administration over their mandate from Congress. It's actually using a list of DEI keywords authored by Cruz to evaluate all of their grants for compliance.
KELLY: Well - and speak to that, because is this just about DEI, or is there a bigger picture unfolding at the NSF?
LAMBERT: Yeah, there's a bigger picture. So staff last week were told to expect layoffs of 25 to 50% over the next two months, and they're also expecting that President Trump's proposed budget could cut funding by billions of dollars for the agency. And these kinds of reductions would just be devastating for their research capacity and for research as a whole in the U.S. I spoke with Elizabeth Popp Berman, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, about what all these actions might mean.
ELIZABETH POPP BERMAN: The fundamental thing that's happening, I think, is taking control of science away from people who are doing science and people who are in that space and giving it to political figures.
KELLY: So practically speaking, internationally speaking, what could this mean for science, for scientific research? I want both of you to take that. Jon, you first.
LAMBERT: Yeah. Overall, the U.S. may just start spending significantly less on research, and that could mean that there are potentially lots of discoveries that just don't get made or could be made elsewhere.
STEIN: Yeah, and I'll say that similar sentiment in the world of medical research. There's just a lot of concern that this could undermine the U.S.'s standing as a global leader in biomedical research. But I should also note that just today, a coalition of 22 attorneys general announced that they are filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts to block the sudden change in the NIH's funding policy for indirect costs.
KELLY: We will see where that one goes. NPR's Rob Stein and Jon Lambert, thank you.
LAMBERT: Thank you.
STEIN: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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