As the federal budget tightens, university researchers have come under growing pressure to help convince policy makers of the importance of spending on science. Now they may get drafted to lobby legislators.
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the nation’s largest coalition of biomedical-research associations, is planning a program in which it will recruit researchers to help its budget lobbyists. In the program, called Stand Up for Science, the federation plans to find researchers in districts where members of Congress have been reluctant to support federal spending on research. Then it will ask the researchers to get friendlier with the lawmakers.
For years, the organization has been asking researchers to help make clear to lawmakers the importance of research spending. But its efforts, which include an annual lobby day on Capitol Hill, have had limited success, said the group’s current president, Joseph C. LaManna, a professor of neurology, physiology and biophysics, and neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, in Cleveland.
And after years of declining or flat budgets at the National Institutes of Health, the largest provider of basic research money to universities, the federation is seeking a more aggressive approach to its legislative outreach strategies, Mr. LaManna said on Monday at a news briefing. “These efforts are desperately needed, and we will rise to the challenge,” Mr. LaManna said.
The plan will involve identifying lawmakers whose support for federal research spending could be critical on a particular vote, and then asking university researchers in that member’s district to take steps that include inviting the lawmaker to the campus to get a stronger sense of the science and how it benefits the community, said Jennifer A. Hobin, the organization’s director of science policy.
The NIH received a budget of $30.6-billion for the current fiscal year. That’s slightly above the $30.4-billion it received in 2011, but it’s still part of an overall multiyear decline when adjusted for inflation, the federation said. The group is recommending an NIH budget of $32-billion for the 2013 fiscal year, or an increase of 4.5 percent. The Obama administration is scheduled to issue its annual budget recommendations on February 13.
