The Trump administration's proposal to cut National Institutes of Health (NIH) indirect funds has been widely attacked, with heated claims it will annihilate biomedical scientific research in the United States. Leading with a picture of a 12-year-old child with muscular dystrophy, Shetal Shah, a neonatology professor, argued in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the cuts would "hobble" vital medical research, and a Time magazine interviewee went as far as to call it the "apocalypse" of U.S. science writ large. While the funding cut has been blocked by federal judges for now, the future fiscal status of the NIH, and the university researchers that depend on it, remains uncertain.
Pundits discussing the cuts nearly universally agree that federally funded science is a crucial component of lifesaving medical therapies, innovative technology, and the ongoing status of the U.S. as a scientific superpower. These assertions are repeated ad nauseam despite history telling a different story. Promulgating three core myths, advocates for maintaining the status quo of public funding have been active in the media, but none of their key assertions withstand considering the historical record.
