Sir

Your Editorial “Budget let-downs” (Nature 427, 571; 200410.1038/427571a) paints a picture of US science funding that differs astoundingly from reality. The trajectory of R&D growth that you call “lacklustre” has risen more rapidly during the past four years than at any time in the past three decades: an average of 10% per year under the current administration. At US$132 billion, the proposed 2005 R&D budget is at an all-time high and consumes a greater fraction of the domestic discretionary budget than at any time since the height of the Apollo space programme.

The proposals for priority programmes at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA and other agencies are above current and anticipated inflation levels and are well above the 0.5% increase for other parts of the non-defence discretionary budget. Priorities are well defined, established with wide interagency planning, and generally supported across agencies.

The proposed reorientation of NASA integrates robotic and human exploration, strengthens the scientific rationale for human spaceflight, and sets long-term budget guidelines that will protect NASA science from overruns elsewhere. The Hubble Telescope decision is not connected with this reorientation, but strongly related to safety issues identified by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

The United States leads the world in providing resources to pursue critical research in areas such as environment, energy and global health. Some programmes have been reduced or eliminated on the basis of their performance record; others have been enhanced. Investments in areas of research related to domestic security, including emerging infectious diseases, belie your puzzling statement that “pressing scientific challenges ... evidently cannot attract sufficient resources.”

Equally puzzling is your failure to discover direction and coordination in a budget shaped by specific interagency initiatives for security, space exploration, climate change, nanotechnology, information technology and energy initiatives. These are identified so explicitly in the budget materials that one marvels at your statement: “No sign of that this year”. On the contrary, the coherence and strength of US science has never been greater or more productive.