The Department ofEnergy’s Advanced Photon
Source in Lemont, Illinois,
will get an upgrade under
the new spending bill.

IN D EP TH

Congress gives science a record funding boost
Lawmakers largely reject deep cuts proposed by President Donald Trump for 2018
By Jeffrey Mervis

PHOTO: ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY/FLICKR/CC BY-NC-SAR

esearchers are ecstatic over the$4.8 billion increase that the U.S.
Congress showered on nine leading
civilian science agencies last week.
But their joy may be short-lived.
The hikes, including $3 billion
more for the National Institutes of Health(NIH), are part of a $1.3 trillion spending
package for 2018 that includes a record$176.8 billion for federal spending on R&D—
a 12.8%, or $20.1 billion, increase over 2017.
The spending bill, which President Donald
Trump signed last Friday, has put the scientific community “over the moon,” Rush
Holt, CEO of AAAS (publisher of Science) in
Washington, D.C., said in a statement. “Weapplaud congressional leaders … for recognizing that funding science and technology
continues to be a sound investment.”
The good news stems largely from agovernment-wide budget deal that allowed
lawmakers to lift mandatory spending caps
on discretionary accounts by a cumulative $300 billion over 2 years. But there’s astring attached: Most of the additional civilian spending occurs in the first year, 2018,
meaning that researchers shouldn’t expect
a repeat of this year’s windfall in fiscal 2019,
which starts on 1 October 2018.
Another concern is the lopsided allocation, with NIH getting about two-thirds ofthe raise given to the top civilian scienceagencies (see graphic, p. 1448). That could
reignite a long-simmering debate overwhether federal investments have tipped
too far toward the biomedical sciences.
Still, passage of the legislation marked ahappy ending to a year of fiscal angst andpolitical wrangling. Many scientists had seen
Trump’s 2018 budget request as a slap in theface. Released last May, it called for massive
cuts to research—22% less for NIH, an 11%
reduction at the National Science Foundation(NSF), 17% less for the Office of Science at theDepartment of Energy (DOE), and a 24% cut
at the National Institute of Standards andTechnology (NIST). The White House also
wanted to ax the Advanced Research Projects
Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and numerous climate and environmental science programs. Amodest 1% dip in NASA science was a rare
exception to the proposed bloodletting.
Congressional appropriators largely ignored the cuts Trump requested as they began writing their spending bills. Still, they
were constrained by annual spending caps
set by a 2011 law aimed at reducing the federal deficit over the next decade. In practice,
the caps meant that any boost for one program required offsetting cuts elsewhere.
Those trade-offs reflected ideological andpersonal preferences. At NASA, for instance,Representative John Culberson (R–TX), ascience fan who leads the House of Representatives spending committee that oversees NASA, NSF, and other science agencies,
proposed cutting the space agency’s climate
research—which he thinks falls outside NASA’s charter. At the same time, he wanted toexpedite a proposed mission to Jupiter’s wa-

SCIENCE sciencemag.org

tery moon Europa, which he and some scientists see as a promising place to find alien life.
Culberson and other appropriators also
noted that many science agencies might benefit if Congress and the White House couldagree on raising the caps. That is exactly whathappened. A February budget deal, which
also prevented a government shutdown,provided $63 billion more for civilian discretionary spending in 2018, with an additional$18 billion available in 2019. (The military
got $80 billion and $18 billion, respectively.)With the new money in hand, Congress
went to work. NASA science got an 8% boost,to $6.22 billion, and the Europa mission—
including a lander—got an even bigger hikethan initially planned. The agency’s $1.92 billion earth sciences budget avoided the ax, as
did several climate missions. NSF’s budget
grew by 4%, to $7.767 billion, and NIST’s research account gained 5%, to $724 million.
At DOE, the final bill not only rejected theproposed Trump cuts but also raised the Office of Science budget by $868 million—or16%—to $6.26 billion. The total will enable
the agency to continue U.S. support for ITER,
the international fusion reactor under construction in France, and accelerate work on
several shovel-ready projects at DOE’s national laboratories, including upgrading theSpallation Neutron Source at the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee.
In addition, ARPA-E survived and received a$47 million bump, to $353 million. Overall,DOE’s raise should allow the agency to fund“a lot of timely, well-vetted ideas that are
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U.S. SCIENCE FUNDING

NEWS | I N D E P T H

the agency received in the late 1990s andearly 2000s, when its budget doubled in just
5 years. The doubling triggered concern thatfederal spending had tilted too far toward
biomedicine and was neglecting the physicalsciences. In response, in 2006, then-President
George W. Bush and his science adviser, JohnMarburger, hatched an initiative to double
the budgets of NSF, NIST, and DOE science
over a similarly short time span. Congress
liked the idea but never delivered the money.
At the same time, the NIH doubling left
a mixed legacy. NIH’s budget stagnated forthe next decade as legislators felt they hadtaken care of the agency for years to come.
Meanwhile, the boom created an expandedcohort of young, well-trained scientists, leading to increasingly stiff competition for funding. Community leaders lamented this “hardlanding,” and some said that smaller, steadier

Biomedical research won about two-thirds of the $4.8 billion increase given to nine civilian science agencies.

National Institutes of Health

New funding ($million)
01000

Department of Energy science

2000

3000

37.3

869

NASA science

6.3

457

6.2295National Science Foundation
U.S. Geological Survey

63

National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration research
National Institute of Standardsand Technology research

3534

Department of Agriculture research337.81.1
0.5
0.7
1.2

Environmental Protection
Agency science -1

The total includes a 30%, $414 million
increase for Alzheimer’s disease research.
The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative gets a$140 million boost, to $400 million. The Allof Us precision medicine study receives a$60 million increase, to $290 million. At least$500 million in new funds will go to researchon opioid addiction. The bill also orders NIH
to delay implementing a new, broader definition of clinical trials that basic behavioral
and brain researchers had warned could stifle their research.
Even NIH advocates were stunned by theoutcome. “Beyond words, folks,” tweeted
Benjamin Corb, director of public affairs at
the American Society for Biochemistry andMolecular Biology in Rockville, Maryland.
But outside the biomedical community thenews stirred some quiet grumbling. NIH’s
success recalls the large spending increases
1448

2018 Budget($billion)

0.7

increases would have been better for NIH.
Congress may not have the fiscal wherewithal for another big boost in civilian research in 2019, however. And there’s alsoreason to question its overall commitment
to continued growth. In touting the omnibus
bill, for instance, many top appropriators
didn’t even mention research. Those that didmentioned just medical research.
The White House has also ignored the research boost, emphasizing the big increases
for the military and denigrating civilian science programs. Trump responded to thenews of a final deal by tweeting that he “hadto waste money on Dem giveaways” to get the$700 billion he wanted for national security.
Of course, those “giveaways” include every
dollar spent on civilian science. jWith reporting by Jefrey Brainard, Adrian
Cho, Jocelyn Kaiser, and Kelly Servick.

U.K. trialsof airway
transplants
are in limbo
Studies are based on flawed
evidence and could harm
patients, scientists say
By Matt Warren, in Liverpool, U.K.

Replacing a failing windpipe, or trachea,with one partially made from a patient’s own stem cells once looked likethe cutting edge of regenerative medicine. But the concept took a severe
blow in 2016 with the dramatic fall ofPaolo Macchiarini, a surgeon at the Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm. Macchiarini
was fired by KI for scientific negligence andhas been found guilty of misconduct in morethan half a dozen papers. Most of his patients
have died, and Swedish prosecutors are considering whether to reopen a criminal caseagainst him that was closed last October.
But is the idea underlying Macchiarini’swork—“seeding” a scaffold with a patient’s
own stem cells, in hopes of regenerating ahealthy, functional organ—still worth testing in patients? That’s the question facing
scientists in the United Kingdom, wheretwo trials of stem cell–based larynx (voicebox) and trachea transplants are planned
but on hold in the wake of the scandal.
Both studies, led by former Macchiarini
collaborator and University College London (UCL) laryngologist Martin Birchall,
received approval from the Medicine andHealthcare Products Regulatory Agency
more than 2 years ago and have obtained
close to £5 million from U.K. funding agencies. An independent inquiry last year concluded there was no reason to cancel thetrials, and UCL says they can proceed.
But some scientists say the studies, like
Macchiarini’s operations, are based onflimsy evidence and could harm patients. InNovember 2017, cellular and molecular biologist Patricia Murray and biochemist RaphaëlLévy of the University of Liverpool filed a detailed complaint with the U.K. Parliament’s
Science and Technology Committee, which isholding an inquiry into research integrity, inan effort to stop the studies. (They followed
sciencemag.org SCIENCE

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The National Institutes of Health leads the way

REGENERATIVE MEDICINECREDITS: (GRAPHIC) J. YOU/SCIENCE; (DATA) U.S. CONGRESS

champing at the bit,” says Thom Mason, aformer ORNL director who is vice president
for laboratory operations at Battelle in Columbus, which runs six DOE labs.
NIH, the biggest winner, cashed in on its
traditional popularity among legislators andthe potent pleas of disease advocacy organizations. No one expected Congress to go alongwith Trump’s proposed deep cut. Instead, thequestion was how much more NIH, which received $2 billion increases in both 2016 and2017, would get this time around.
Last summer, before the budget caps werelifted, the House came in at the low end,
with a $1 billion raise for 2018. The Senate
countered with $2 billion. In the end, thetwo bodies “compromised” at $3 billion, an
8.7% boost. That’s the largest annual increase
for NIH since a massive 2009 economic recovery bill gave it $10 billion.

Congress gives science a record funding boost
Jeffrey Mervis

Science 359 (6383), 1447-1448.
DOI: 10.1126/science.359.6383.1447

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6383/1447

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