Where does federal science funding stand now?

Parikh says the administration’s February 2025 budget request would have cut funding by 50% at NIH, NSF, NASA, and other agencies. In response, a Republican-majority Congress held hearings and pushed back in a bipartisan way. By the end of the year, appropriations bills kept science funding relatively level. Parikh credits scientists, patients, and companies for speaking up, rather than suggesting Congress simply changed its mind. He cautions, however, that appropriated money still must pass through several administrative steps before reaching laboratories.

After Congress appropriated the funds, the White House Office of Management and Budget had to apportion them to agencies such as NIH and NSF. Parikh says that process was unusually slow, possibly because officials wanted to avoid spending the money or eventually rescind it. Congress pushed back during the summer, and the money finally reached agencies, producing a year-end rush to distribute it. Large amounts were sent to laboratories, but the delay created uncertainty and disrupted research even though the headline funding levels looked stable.

Parikh explains that agencies increasingly released the full value of multi-year grants at once. A five-year, $5 grant that once consumed $1 of the current appropriation could instead consume all $5 immediately. He says this is potentially sound policy over time, but implementing it abruptly reduced the number of other grants available that year. The impact fell especially hard on early-career researchers, scientists newly on the tenure track, and small businesses. He argues that the shift should have been phased in gradually; otherwise, the system may recover in five years only after losing researchers and infrastructure.

Asked about researchers leaving for countries such as Canada, Parikh says reliable data are not yet available: National Science Foundation figures lag by several years, and the National Science Board office responsible for some tracking no longer exists. He is more worried about scientists deciding that research is not a viable career and moving into finance or other fields. He calls this a threat to the science “pathway”—his younger colleagues prefer that term to “pipeline”—because uncertainty can deter domestic talent before it ever enters research.

Flora asks whether the administration is still screening grants for supposedly blacklisted terms such as “diversity” and “women.” Parikh says NIH officials deny that this is happening, while some NIH program managers say it is. Lawsuits could reveal more through discovery, but he worries the damage will occur before the facts are settled. He cites a material-science Nobel laureate who concluded that obtaining dedicated funding would be easier in China, arguing that uncertainty is driving away both early-career researchers and highly accomplished scientists.

Only small percentages of laid-off federal scientists were rehired, Parikh says, because essential work could not be completed without them; agencies such as FDA also posted new openings. The overall losses remain substantial: NSF is more than 30% below its 2019 staffing level, while NIH is down roughly 20% to 30%. Parikh places those percentages against agency sizes—about 2,500 employees at NSF and 16,000 at NIH—to show why rehiring a few dozen or even a few hundred people does not restore capacity.

Parikh sees the election of a record number of scientists, doctors, and nurses as a bright spot, but he is deliberately limiting expectations for the next two years. Congress has supported science on a bipartisan basis and can increase oversight and impose guardrails, yet agencies remain in the executive branch. Congress therefore cannot easily stop an administration from pausing grants or excluding particular universities. Parikh says the scientific ecosystem still includes researchers, universities, companies, and appropriators, and he hopes resilient, pragmatic voices can find a way forward.