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No, there's a bad link on the Science page itself, that takes subscribers to the wrong story!
Anyway, regarding "One might think that the catastrophic failure of the management of NIH, and of the science policy community as a whole, to prepare its community for this “day of reckoning” would elicit a bit more ‘what the F!@#!! were you thinking???’ comments from folks.":
My impression is that academic scientists typically have a mentality that once a university search committee has blessed them with a position, they're entitled to funding. They don't blame administrators for misallocating resources since why should there be any scarcity in the first place?
The Science article is a good example, actually. Is there any reason to think the effect of nicotine on fetal brain development is insufficiently understood? If it is, is the zebrafish a better system for doing than work than spending a little extra on a mammalian system? I don't have the slightest idea, but it doesn't seem to occur to the authors that anyone might care. Kurt Svoboda has a faculty position, and is entitled to funding, end of story.