Trump quashes scientific criticism at NIH, world’s largest funder of public biomedical research

Trump abruptly cancels critical science reviews at NIH, world’s largest public funder of biomedical research

By Max Kozlov & Nature Magazine

Confusion and anxiety erupt across America’s health research community this week after Donald Trump taking office as the 47th US president. His administration abruptly canceled research reviews, travel and training for scientists inside and outside the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public biomedical funder. Adding to the concern: Team Trump appears to have removed entire web pages about diversity programs and diversity-related grants from the agency’s site.

The cancellation of meetings and travel is part of a pause in external communications issued Jan. 21 by the NIH’s parent organization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Researchers who spoke to Nature Let’s say that although a short one-day pause in communications in US agencies has occurred in the past when new administrations have started, to reorient the strategy, scope and duration of the Trump team – it should lasting until at least February 1 – is unprecedented. Without advisory board meetings, the NIH cannot offer research grants, temporarily freezing 80 percent of the agency’s $47 billion budget that funds research across the country and beyond.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” says Carole Labonne, a developmental biologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who has received funding from the agency for more than 20 years. The uncertainty caused by the pause will be “devastating for the scientific community,” especially for early-career researchers, Labonne adds.

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The pause includes “mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or essential to the preservation of health,” according to an NIH spokesperson. “This is a short pause to allow the new team to establish a review and prioritization process.”

NIH and HHS spokespeople did not respond to questions about whether the grant review panels were considered public appearances and why they were canceled, or about researchers’ concerns that the pause will hamper the agency’s mission.

A mission threatened?

Typically, NIH Awards research grants come after two separate panels of independent specialists in a particular scientific field have reviewed project proposals. On Wednesday, reports emerged about the social media x platforms And Blue Sky that grant review panels scheduled before February 2 had been canceled without any indication that they would be postponed.

These panels, called “study sections” and “advisory boards”, are sometimes scheduled a year in advance and can include more than 30 participating researchers, so will take time to reschedule and could result in a “domino effect” of cancellations. Researchers awaiting a grant review decision “may be laid off or forced to seek employment elsewhere if funding is uncertain or delayed,” says Labonne. Early-career researchers are particularly at risk, “as it can mean missing research milestones and putting hiring, promotion and tenure decisions at risk,” she adds.

Harold Varmus, a former NIH director who is now a cancer researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, says that handing over communications of new policies when there is a new presidential administration can make sense. But the broad rollback of the current pause is contrary to the agency’s mission, he said. The US Congress allocates money to a budget at the NIH for research funding, he adds, so “the will of Congress will be challenged if we don’t change what’s happening.”

Esther Choo, an emergency medicine physician at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, written on bluesky on January 22 That a study section she was scheduled to attend was canceled this week. As a reviewer on grant proposals, she said, you’re constantly reading about ideas for research projects that could be a “health game changer.” She added: “I hope we get back on track soon. There are real people, real lives waiting for science. »

The communications pause also includes NIH sibling agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which helps protect the health of people in the United States. Today, the CDC has not released its weekly digest of disease statistics and research, called the Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Reportrelied on by scientists and health practitioners around the world – the first time in the digest’s 60 years. Three reports on The emerging avian H5N1 FLU epidemic were supposed to be published in this week’s edition, according to THE Washington Post.

Diversity goals

Adding to uncertainty among researchers, the Trump administration also appears to have erased all materials relating to structural racism and diversity from the NIH website. The NIH was criticized by the research community over the years For a lack of racial and ethnic diversity among those who win grants from the agency — criticisms that are “justified” and urgent that the United States and its scientists become more diverse, Varmus says.

These deletions are probably the result of Trump Day 1 Executive order To end what he calls “radical and unnecessary” government diversity programs and to suspend the employment of anyone working in these roles.

Now the NIH website has application information for grants called diversity supplements, which provide early-career researchers with up to $125,000 and up to five years of training and mentoring. Also gone are materials from the agency’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and an agency-wide initiative called Unite that aimed to address structural racism in the workforce. of biomedical work.

The community has struggled to diversify the scientific workforce — “there has been only modest progress,” Labonne says. “And now it’s been erased with the stroke of a pen.”

This article is reproduced with permission and was first publication January 23, 2025.