On the surface, a gathering held for young research faculty last week at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was a clear expression of determination by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help them compete for grants. The agency fears that continued Congressional budget cuts, combined with the growing number of scientists who work later into life, could drive younger researchers away from academe, leaving university labs dangerously understaffed in coming decades. As sunshine bathed the seaside lab's elegantly manicured grounds, some 200 young professors from 90 research universities sat indoors for hours, taking full advantage of the opportunity to probe NIH experts on the fine points of grants with names like R01, R21, and K23. But even as they offered advice to young researchers, key conference organizers acknowledged that they weren't sure how far the NIH should go to help. There's no question that NIH is very concerned about the fact of the increasing age of "independence" in science. But what steps NIH should take "is a huge debate" inside the agency. The clearest point of agreement is on the underlying problem: Federally financed research has repeatedly proved its value to almost everyone except members of Congress. A study last year by Battelle Memorial Institute calculated that the $3.8-billion that the U.S. government spent on the Human Genome Project from 1988 to 2003 had already driven $796-billion in economic growth. Almost the entire project was repaid by a single year of taxes from the genomics-enabled industry in 2010, the report said. Nevertheless, Congress has cut the budget of the NIH, the leading supplier of federal money for basic research at U.S. universities, by about 20 percent relative to inflation since 2003. That's brought renewed attention to the longstanding fact that older, more experienced, and better-connected scientists have a built-in advantage when seeking their share of the $26-billion in support for external research that the NIH distributes each year. A total of 375 researchers, mostly those with seniority and experience, now hold more than $5-million apiece in NIH grants. More than two-thirds of the NIH's main category of research grants are being won by those who have already won another grant. The worry is that such daunting odds for their younger colleagues, at a time of shrinking NIH budgets, could scare off a generation of promising new researchers.