Comment by Fomite | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Fomite | Hacker News Reader

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Since a lot of people on HN don't know how indirect costs work, especially for the NIH:

Grant proposals don't cover things that don't directly cover the project. Journal subscriptions, facilities, copy paper, administrative staff, etc. all aren't eligible, and so get rolled into the vague notion of indirect rates.

When an NIH grant is awarded for a particular direct cost amount, the indirect rate is then added on. So for my institution, if I get a $100,000 grant, my institution gets $153,000, because we have a 53% indirect rate. These are periodically renegotiated with the Federal government, and used widely.

Private research companies can and do just tuck this into their costs, but universities aren't allowed to do that.

A 15% rate is, to be blunt, catastrophic. It's "Every University in the U.S. Loses Money on Every Single NIH Grant" levels of bad.

And yes, this is the rate a lot of foundations charge. That's not because it's a reasonable rate - it's because it's a charitable foundation, and we all sort of indulge them because of their missions, and their own need to be efficient. But they're also a minuscule amount of the funding landscape, and often small grants. We tell ourselves its find - they're worthy causes, and loss leaders, etc. But applying that to the NIH will be a massive blow to biomedical research in the United States.

Your comments are quite good and accurate. I would add that funding from private foundations is in many cases only viable because NIH overhead is paying for the supporting infrastructure. Very few biomedical researchers are supported solely by private funding (including the building and lab facilities).

These changes also directly impact research hospitals, not just universities.

That doesn't mean indirect costs shouldn't be reformed. This is just simply the most disruptive possible way to do it.

Yep. I worked in a biomedical research department. Getting funding was always difficult, requiring 2 full-time grant writers for the government stuff and the dept chair who split their time between raising from private individuals, corporations, and all other sources. Government has strict rules about what money can and can't be spent on. Take equipment given by the government: often times, it would gather dust and couldn't be disposed of, despite being obsolete and replaced by something else, because of government red tape. Getting grants is very competitive and there's rarely enough money to cover all of the ordinary functions like salaries of an admin person, office supplies, or other overhead things needed for students, faculty, and staff to operate a functional department.

The losers of this will be patients of the entire world, the slow down of advancements in medicine and STEM fields of all kinds, and the sucking sound of brains leaving for other countries.

Yeah, this will hit research hospitals, organizations like RTI, etc.

And yeah, the rates private foundations pay is enabled by the NIH rates, and also that the NIH makes up the bulk of the funding in the first place. There's an argument - that I'm sympathetic to - that they shouldn't get a discount and the rate is the rate, but that's a very different reform than what we're seeing now.

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