{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-uncovers-nsf-spending-375000-study-importance-federal-research-funding/", "Sen. Rand Paul Uncovers NSF Spending $375,000 to Study Importance of Federal Research Funding", "2016-06-14", "2016", "2016-06", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Rand Paul today released the latest edition of \u2018The Waste Report,\u2019 which is an ongoing project cataloguing egregious examples of waste within the U.S. government. In the latest edition, Sen. Paul uncovers the National Science Foundation (NSF) spending $375,000 on a two-year study to determine what effects the availability of federal funding for research has on scientists\u2019 career choices and scientific outcomes.\n\n\u2018The Waste Report\u2019 can be found HERE or below.\n\nIt seems kind of circular, getting federal research funding to study the importance of federal research funding. Well that is exactly what the National Science Foundation (NSF) is doing, spending $375,000 on a 2-year study to determine what effects the availability of federal funding for research has on scientists\u2019 career choices and scientific outcomes. One can only imagine what the findings will be\u2026\n\nThe grant synopsis reads in part:\n\nYoung life science researchers\u2026 may elect to begin their careers by either entering academia, or by joining biotechnology or pharmaceutical firms\u2026 career choice is also affected by external constraints such as the availability of, and competition for, [federal] research funding. [1]\n\nThough the Waste Report has reported on federal research shenanigans like how to have the perfect first date and the gambling habits of Ugandans (and many more), is it actually budget unpredictability that is putting critical research in jeopardy? Just how volatile is federal funding for research?\n\nWe decided to look and what we found makes funding this project all the more unnecessary. Looking at federal research funding, adjusted for inflation, since the year 2000 for NSF, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and overall, we found that since 2000, funding has increased 197%, 198% and 176% respectively. Further, we found that on average, funding for scientific research in these areas increased, again in real terms, 7.23 %, 7.3%, and 6.7% per year.[2]\n\nBut since, \u201cHistorically the amount of public research funding has changed over time reflecting congressional priorities\u2026\u201d and this project hopes to identify, \u201creforms that create more certainty in the budget allocation process could generate greater social benefits at lower costs\u2026\u201d We thought we look even farther back, say 50 years, to see just how uncertain federal research funding might be. To find out if there was some real year-to-year volatility we looked at a three and five year moving average.\n\nWhat we found is, over 50 years, funding for federal research (in real terms) has increased on average about 8.7 percent a year, and the two moving averages both hold within a half a percentage point. Similar results were found for NSF and NIH, which itself saw an average increase of 13.54% and a five year moving average of 12.33%.\n\nIn other words, federal research funding does not show uncertainty, in fact it shows stable and constant growth; and it did not take us two years and $375,000 to figure that out.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T20:54:04Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-uncovers-nsf-spending-375000-study-importance-federal-research-funding/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.0857062190771103, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}