The NIH Overheads Debacle

The new NIH directive attempting to cut billions of dollars in biomedical research funding by reducing all overhead rates to 15% of the grant is just another ignorant and bitter attack on US advantages like freedom, science, and enviable success. Here are some points emerging out of the news:

• Paying universities overheads was itself a cost-saving tactic recommended by Vannevar Bush, who in 1945 published a report entitled “Science — The Endless Frontier” in which he outlined a plan to ensure that the US remain the dominant science and technology power after it emerged atop competing nations after World War II.