Even if agencies suddenly accelerated the flow of research dollars – as they did last year toward the end of the fiscal year – much of the damage from the slow rate of grantmaking is already done. Universities have already delayed or canceled projects, scaled back hiring or let researchers go, and admitted fewer graduate students – decisions they can’t easily reverse with a later influx of funds.

Further, last year, agencies spent down their budgets by making larger grant payments to a smaller number of researchers. If the agencies do so again this year, fewer researchers – especially early-career researchers – will receive awards and be able to make scientific contributions.

As Kornbluth noted recently in an opinion essay in The Boston Globe, “In daily life, people may not feel the effects right away, or even in 10 years. But we will feel it.

A grave violence has been done to our future.