As research funding drops, so do hopes for careers

Dr. Weiva Sieh turned to medical research after becoming a physician. Now the postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington is starting to wonder if she may wind up a practicing doctor after all.

Declining government money for scientific research has made the career path for junior researchers such as Sieh uncertain.

"Whenever research funding tightens up, senior people are able to get their projects refunded, but generally it's hard to start new projects," said Sieh, 35. "It's especially hard if you don't have a name already. Being a young, new investigator at this time is going to be very difficult."

Sieh said she is unsure of her future in genetic research after her fellowship ends.

"Like the game of roulette, there's some chance involved," she said.

Astrobiologist Peter Ward, 57, said the most troubling part of government cuts to research is that the people most likely to make those discoveries — young people — are the hardest hit by those cutbacks.

Although money for his long-term projects is all but assured, Ward isn't so sure who will be around to continue his work when he retires from the University of Washington, especially because the field of astrobiology has been devastated by a major NASA cutback.

Scientists say no new astrobiology projects — especially those designed by up-and-coming scientists — will be funded for at least a few years.

As research money starts to disappear, Ward has started firing junior scientists — technicians, graduate students, postdoctoral candidates.

"It's a bloodletting, and it's happening all over," he said.

The University of Washington receives more government money for scientific research than any other public university, according to the National Science Foundation. But UW reported a drop in federal research dollars of 5 percent, or $25.8 million, at the end of its third quarter this year, compared to last year.

Financial ups and downs aren't unusual in the corporate world, but university research dollars have seen a steady upward trend for more than 20 years.

Another stark contrast between business and science is the lack of a bank from which scientists can borrow money during lean times to keep their research going, said John Slatterly, vice dean for research and graduate education at the university's medical school.

The field of medical research has been especially hard hit by government cutbacks. The medical school has seen its federal research money drop by 7.1 percent, or $24 million, this fiscal year when compared to the previous year — the first time its research grants have been cut since 1970.

The National Institutes of Health said the downward trend will continue in the next fiscal year. President Bush's budget calls for a 0.1 percent decrease in the fiscal 2007 NIH budget, which adds up to a decrease of about $65 million, said NIH spokesman Don Ralbovsky.

"Pulled the rug out"

Dr. Gail Jarvik, 47, was a student in the 1980s, which she called the last big down cycle for medical-research dollars.

"There were people who moved out of science," she said. "Once you lose those people, they don't come back."

She depends entirely on money from the National Institutes of Health to buy her equipment, pay her salary and the salaries of 10 people in her medical genetics lab at the UW, plus another 10 for whom she pays part of their salary.

Jarvik, whose specialty is the genetics of heart disease, worries about the future of both the scientists and science. "People will lose their jobs and good science won't get done."

Darlene Lim, 34, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., started working to secure her next job as soon as she started her postdoctoral position more than two years ago. She submitted proposals to NASA and hoped that at least one or two would succeed.

Then came the news that NASA wouldn't be paying for any new research projects.

"Obviously, it really has pulled the rug out from underneath me," Lim said.

She mourned the loss of support for a relatively new and interesting field of science, but immediately began altering her NASA proposals to focus more on Earth instead of other planets. She's hoping the National Science Foundation will support her research.

Big projects lost

Senior researchers say the impact of budget cuts won't be seen today or tomorrow, but when research dollars start flowing again, young scientists may have already found other ways to make a living.

"It's not like building can openers. Making a scientist — that is a long and expensive process," Ward said. "We have people in the pipeline and now we're telling them to go sell insurance or follow the money, which is in military bio-weapons."

Jarvik said her field is poised for some amazing breakthroughs, if the money is there.

She blames the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina for sapping dollars from medical research.

"There is a widely accepted feeling that money is getting tight and that good projects will not be funded," she said.

Jarvik spoke of the next "moon shot" of genetics, an ambitious idea that isn't likely to get funded right now. Scientists have proposed looking at the DNA of tens of thousands of people and keeping track of their day-to-day lives over a long period of time to apply the human genome project to common diseases.

Ward said in the area of astrobiology, cuts in NASA are already eliminating his field's big speculative projects. One he's been working on as part of a big consortium — looking at why and how planets become and remain habitable — recently saw a $1.2 million grant get cut.

"It's not in the national interest to be cutting science to the degree that we are," Ward said.