Nature: Don’t hide the decline
President Barack Obama’s FY 2015 budget proposal “leaves the budgets of major scientific funders, such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the research efforts at the Department of Energy, essentially flat. … Meanwhile, the economic strain on the country is immense. Mandatory spending obligations — on retirement and health care programs, for example — are soaring, squeezing discretionary spending on other worthy areas, including research. … Rather than a relief, apparently flat budgets are a sure sign that competition for funds will grow still further. And that things will get worse before they get better” (3/11).