Harvard president Drew Faust was on Capitol Hill today to testify

how the flat NIH budget over the last five years is threatening the careers of young scientists and could drive more to leave academic biomedical science in the US. Her testimony, along with that of an associate professor from Ohio State and a dean from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, was timed with the release of a report [PDF] called “A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk”, authored by seven leading research institutions, including Harvard.

It describes the stories of 12 young researchers and their struggles to find funding. They talked about, for instance, how they couldn’t get grants because they had to wait at the back of the line while senior researchers got their renewals, and how they shied away from doing risky research in favor of more fundable projects.

And the numbers seem to bear these stories out. According to the report’s press release:

• the average age of the first R01 grant recipient is now 43…last I heard, it was 42.
• the success rate for R01 applicants is particularly low for first-timers: 18 percent.

By the way, President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget calls for another year of flat funding for the NIH.

On a related topic, I posted yesterday about the HHMI’s approach to dealing with the problem. And Massachusetts is also chipping in with a funding program for new investigators.

Update (Mar 12): You can discuss the issues of the NIH funding crunch over in the "Naturejobs careers forum.":https://network.nature.com/forums/naturejobs/1188