The laboratories managed by scientists who depend almost completely on American grants can be closed on their income with low research financing.Credit: Karen Dossi/Getti
Even when the first four federal grants were canceled in February, Jeremy Springan still has hope. Social science research, which he participated in the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, had enough financing from the largest project of the Ministry of Defense in the United States for another two years. He has registered access with the Defence Defence Program official, who assumed that the remaining grant would be safe.
But by mid-March, the matter also went-and with him, Springan believed, his last snapshot to win a living by conducting research. “This was really the end of things,” he says. “My position will not be applicable in the future.”
Like thousands of scientists in the United States, Springman draws most of his salary not from his university, but from a grant from external sources. Teaching staff feels “soft money” and those who work in their laboratories in particular weakness at a time of deep uncertainty about the future of the US government’s support for research. Laborators that work on soft funds are likely to be among the first to be closed with a reduction in federal financing, because the main investigators cannot ride difficult times on university salary statements. Once closed, it will be difficult to revive these laboratories and their projects, if not impossible, even if federal funding is restored.
“When there is uncertainty about this financing, there is uncertainty about our positions,” said Alejandro de la Viga, a researcher in psychology and nervous imaging at the University of Texas in Austin, who receives all his salaries from the scholarship. “I don’t know how the future will look like for researchers like me.”
Falcoming money
Federal financing agencies have been in turmoil since the opening of US President Donald Trump in January. In the past two months, the new administration has canceled or delayed thousands of federal research grants, and threatened to cut grants to specific universities that do not comply with their demands. In February, the National Institutes of US Health announced that it will be largely limited to the general costs that it will lead to granting them – a move that was currently banned by the courts.
In response to a question about the comment, a White House official said that the administration “stopped things to open the car cover and take a good look at a review of what the previous administration was.” During this inspection, the United States government canceled grants from agencies such as the United States Agency for International Defense and the Ministry of Defense, and have developed plans to cancel hundreds in US National Institutes.
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The impact of these discounts depends on the faculty members in the soft funds on the conditions of their appointments. Some researchers are salaries with only soft funds during the summer, when they do not study, but others depend on granting his full salary. “If you are a university professor, you will get their salaries by school,” says Zoe McLegout, who studies nervous circles at a public university. But for faculty members in money funds, this is not the case, she says. Its university provides about 20 % of its salary; It must feed for the rest on its own.
Soft money situations are common in American medical colleges and public health schools, as well as in independent research institutions. But it can be found in other departments and schools. For example, economist Wi -Yang Tham from the University of Toronto in Canada and his colleagues surveyed professors in 150 dense institutions of research in the field of higher education and found that 72 % of those in natural sciences gained at least part of their salaries from grants1. They also found that on average, medical science professors collected nearly a third of their wages from external sources. A survey of 2022 found about 300 planetary scientists that 21 % of the respondents were on soft money sites2.
Some researchers, including de la Viga, enjoy the opportunity to focus on their laboratories, without committing to teaching or working in the university committees. “I am 100 % search, this is what I love in my job,” he says.
However, others were paid to the roles of soft money by the labor market, and he adds: “The difficult money positions incredibly competitive.”
Laboratory
Many researchers are the soft money they spoke with nature Expect the need to leave the search. If so, the projects they lead will disappear with them. Christa Harrison, a social scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, who draws 100 % of his salary of soft funds, says that faculty members in soft funds can usually restart projects unless the financing gap is a few months. “Once the main investigator is forced to leave the academic circles, the work has ended forever,” she says.