[dekhn]

That's a great question. To the extent that increasing the budget caused more smart people to get PhDs and more of them were able to contribute to the scientific effort (as well as help bigtech develop ML and contribute back to science), I think it was a good idea.

It might have been better executed- somehow matching the increased supply of grad students with increase supply of faculty positions, or perhaps just growing it more slowly to let the inequalities equilibrate a bit more. But ultimately, I think it was a good thing, in that it increased the total science being done.

[redczar]

Thanks for the clarification.

[wileydragonfly]

Yeah, NIH had two guys (Lauer and Collins) that tried to do all kinds of things to spread out funding to junior researchers and increase the number of jobs. The entrenched investigators fought them every step of the way and Trump has since run both off.