The impending cuts to federal spending, triggered by the sequestration deal, have led to a variety of speculation about how noticeable the impact will be on the average citizen. For US-based scientists however, the US government is the single largest source of funding. Researchers were pretty certain that sequestration would hit them very noticeably. Initial estimates suggested that budgets would be slashed by more than eight percent. With the cuts about to kick in, the news has gotten somewhat better—but only somewhat.

The National Science Foundation expects its overall budget will be cut by five percent. In a statement, the Foundation says it has set three priorities for minimizing the impact of these cuts: "Protect commitments to NSF’s core mission and maintain existing awards; protect the NSF workforce; and Protect STEM human capital development programs." To that end, existing grants will be largely unaffected, but new grants will take a major hit—a thousand fewer will be funded this year.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is in line for a similar five percent cut. The NIH plans on passing the cut on to every grant renewed during the coming fiscal year. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology has gone through and figured out what that will mean for each state based on how many NIH funded researchers are there. In addition, it will also end up cutting back on the new grants awarded, although it did not have specific numbers for this.

These cutbacks come at a time when the success rate for grant applications had already been in decline for a number of years. By dramatically reducing the total number of grants available, the cuts will make the competition much more fierce. The danger is that this will force a number of highly trained researchers to find work elsewhere. Even if the cuts are later reversed, valuable expertise may be lost.