Dear Future President of the United States,

In recent years the amount of government money given to scientific research has dropped dramatically. It is uncalled for in this day and age where technology and scientific discoveries play such a prominent role in day to day life for this to happen. Funding cuts can cause a loss in integrity of the research done in this competitive grant giving society. It has even caused some labs to close their doors because of the lack of money for equipment and upkeep. The US government needs to be giving more money to the scientific community to better our country and world as a whole with the benefits of their discoveries.

Since grant money is given based off backers, when a test is proposed some researchers have been forced to over hype or produce biased results to get more interest from potential backers so they can get the grant money they need to do their research. Some make poorly designed experiments to produce more exciting results, the University of Virginia has said "Exciting, novel results are more publishable than other kinds," This results in a loss of integrity and causes bias in the test’s results, making it almost useless. As of right now, "This creates a culture that rewards fast, sexy (and probably wrong) results." writes Gordon Pennycook, a candidate in cognitive psychology at the University of Waterloo.

In the past America has been the lead country in research of biomedical advances, but in recent years government funding for this research has been cut down. The Huffington Post has said that “NIH has lost about 22 percent of its purchasing power since 2003” since then the budget for the NIH(National Institute for Health) has “gone down to $30.1 billion in 2014” according to the national budget. The Journal of the American Medical Association said in a recent article “Given international trends, the United States will relinquish its historical international lead in the next decade unless such measures are undertaken.” We need to be doubling are efforts on medical research with outbreaks of drug-resistant bacteria and widespread diseases such influenza and malaria.

Some people might be opposed to scientific research funding, claiming that other departments need the money instead. This should not happen because the money that goes into this research actually generates more revenue from discoveries and information. “Every US$1 spent by the NIH typically generates $2.21 in additional economic output within 12 months” found a Washington DC-based health-advocacy group. If the medical advancements are not a reason to fund the research, then the economical growth should be.

The government needs to be putting more of an effort into bettering the future of citizens of the US and world. This can happen through a series of changes such as bringing stability in budget amounts, reward fully tested out experiments and fix peer review/peer testing. These changes would not take a lot more money from the budget, but by putting these measures in place they would help insure the validity behind research and reward those who fully test their ideas for the right reasons.

Thank you for your time,

Bryson Halsey

10th grade

St. Paul

Minnesota