Study: It pays for biomedical researchers to know their congressman

How much is a Congressman worth? If you’re a biomedical researcher, the answer is a 6% bump to your funding, suggests a new analysis. About $1.7 billion of the $37.4 billion awarded to researchers by the National Institutes of Health in 2002 and 2003, for example, sprang from the Congressional subcommittee responsible for the federal health research organization, finds a Science magazine study.

And from 1981 to 2003, having one Congressman on the NIH appropriations committee bumped research funding for a state’s biomedical researchers about 6%. Each additional representative on the subcommittee added nearly another 9%, conclude economists Deepak Hegde of the University of California, Berkeley and David Mowery of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Full Story: http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2008/12/study-it-pays-f.html

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Senator Max Baucus http://baucus.senate.gov/

Senator Jon Tester http://tester.senate.gov/

Representative Denny Rehberg http://www.house.gov/rehberg/