The NIH budget had been relatively flat until 1998-2003, when it literally doubled. This caused a sea-change in how biomedical research was organized.
One might naively expect that a massive injection of money would only make research easier. However, universities reacted by expanding dramatically. Many of those new hires, especially at med schools, are on "soft money" contracts, where they're responsible for bringing in enough external grant money to cover their own salary AND research expenses. As a result, it has never been harder to get a research grant: success rates that were >30% have slipped into the low teens at some institutes. At the same time, the size of the standard "modular" grant at the NIH hasn't changed, so people are competing harder to get less inflation-adjusted money. On top of that, science is getting harder as we discover the easy stuff and expectations are rising for what constitutes "a story."
In short, post-doubling science isn't a professor pottering around between classes; it's become a big, competitive business.
One might naively expect that a massive injection of money would only make research easier. However, universities reacted by expanding dramatically. Many of those new hires, especially at med schools, are on "soft money" contracts, where they're responsible for bringing in enough external grant money to cover their own salary AND research expenses. As a result, it has never been harder to get a research grant: success rates that were >30% have slipped into the low teens at some institutes. At the same time, the size of the standard "modular" grant at the NIH hasn't changed, so people are competing harder to get less inflation-adjusted money. On top of that, science is getting harder as we discover the easy stuff and expectations are rising for what constitutes "a story."
In short, post-doubling science isn't a professor pottering around between classes; it's become a big, competitive business.