Shelly Batts over at Retrospectacle has a post titled, Bush Vetoes NIH Budget And Open Access Bill that is highly critical of the Bush administration's funding of the National Institute of Mental Health. It may be good policy to generously fund NIH as Batts points out -- and I've been critical of some of the funding decisions NIH has made -- but there's more to the story than Batts discusses.

Critics have aptly noted that what gets funded at NIH raises important questions about the Institutes's mission and priorities. Moreover, what Batts doesn't fully discuss -- but her graph alludes to -- is the fact that between 1998-2003 the NIH budget doubled. That's impressive growth for a governmental agency by any measure. Furthermore, while Batts criticizes the Bush administration's spending of $43 billion on military intelligence, it is hardly surprising that the government would allot generous funds for this purpose in a post-9/11 world.

I am sympathetic to those who decry the decline in funding at NIH. After all, grant funded research is difficult enough with the endless bureaucracy entailed with it, the lack of job security, and difficulty in obtaining promotion. Spending money on science and health services research seems a wise investment as it often provides a direct benefit to the public as Batt's points out in her post. But honesty also demands that we acknowledge that few agencies can be expected to sustain the growth that NIH enjoyed in the distant past.