Damn you Pubmed.org!

Somebody please tell me why the national library of medicine gave up their pubmed.com and pubmed.org domains? It used to be you could just type “pubmed.org” and get pubmed. Now, some cyber squatter has put some worthless spam search on the site. Before I realized it wasn’t a site redesign my search got me redirected to a celebrity gossip site, then experimenting with the same search I got a site selling anti-aging cream.
Really? How much does it cost to keep a domain a year? And for that matter, what cyber squatter thinks redirecting scientists at celebrity gossip sites is a great business strategy.
Is the budget really that tight at the NIH? They can’t fork over a couple hundred bucks a year to maintain some convenient domain names? I guess all that money being spent on security and a 10 foot iron gate around a science campus has them searching the couch cushions for pocket change. It’s certainly not going into grants given we’re seeing the lowest rate of funding for R01 applications in decades.