NIH grants have been under political scrutiny since early 2025. But what does the screening process actually look like? What is being flagged? I spent a month digging into leaked docs and emails. We've published the 235-word list that are being flagged by an internal AI tool. And so much more. 🧵

Inside the new political screening that’s stalling NIH grants

Mandatory reviews by top health officials and checks for 235 disfavoured terms have left hundreds of vetted grant applications in administrative limbo.

nature.com

Calling all Scientists! Research Administrators! Deans! Fans of Science! No one is coming to save us. Here is your assignment. I have written a step by step, easy to understand "how-to" document to help you comment on the proposed OMB rule. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-ne...

What We Need to do NEXT: OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule (OMB 2026-10817)

What OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule Means in Practice

elizabethginexi.substack.com

American science right now is basically 10,000 of these stories, all with their own heartbreaking specificity Lost careers, lost progress, lost discoveries I feel so sad every day for all we’ve lost and continue to lose 💔

Kathleen Bachynski@bachynski.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“Dr. Antaki, a biomedical engineer, had been building an artificial heart for babies and young children, a pump the size of a AA battery, and he was getting close. But with his research grants stopped, Dr. Antaki slowly drained his lab’s rainy day funds, and he was forced to lay off all his staff.”

A colleague received bad news from her NIH program officer today: my colleague’s grant got a great score, but NIH still can’t pay it, and my colleague will have to closer her lab. The call ended with the program officer (not my colleague) crying. Awful on so many levels.

wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖

Helen Branswell 🇨🇦@helenbranswell.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I find this unsettling: A new study in #Lancet shows that the number of faux citations in scientific articles is on the rise, and #AI is likely to blame. @aniloza.bsky.social reports. www.statnews.com/2026/05/07/l...

NEW: A serious staffing shortage — of the Trump admin's own making — is delaying the agency's ability to send billions to universities around the country, leaving labs reeling in the meantime. “I thought we were at rock bottom”, a senior NIH official said. “We are below rock bottom now.”

NIH staffing shortage could slash number of new grants issued this year

Some units at the US funding giant are so understaffed, they are focusing on mandated grant renewals rather than new awards.

nature.com

I DO NOT WANT TO 'CHAT WITH MY FILES'

Was looking into what Cognitive Scientists mean by ‘domain-general’ cognition, and then hit upon this. This is definitely NOT how we use that term. Tip: read the last sentence to understand what went wrong here. Sigh.

www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

Writing Faculty Push for the Right to Refuse AI

As universities rush to adopt generative AI–powered tools that claim to enhance teaching, learning and workforce preparation, a growing contingent of academics is questioning where that urgency is com...

insidehighered.com

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted. What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards. Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Reminder, we are not in a CR. There’s an appropriation for the FY. And NIH is working on the Cycle of grants that went to Council *before* the government shutdown last fall.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

New and competitive renewal awards Fewer than 40 new awards were made in the past week, compared to over 100 the previous week. 5/9

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers. The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets

The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

nature.com

REMINDER: Gun violence is the leading killer of children in America. Not immigrants, not trans people. Guns. #SOTU

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

My take on AI use 1) It's making it harder for people to learn *how* to learn 2) If you can't do everything you think ou should be doing without resorting to it — then you're doing (or being asked to do) too much www.patreon.com/posts/149942...

Don’t Let The Machines Do The Living | Culture Study

Get more from Culture Study on Patreon

patreon.com

❤️

Don’t let Russell Vought trick Congress into destroying science by removing multiyear funding limits from the NIH funding bill.

NIH funding is like pizza 🍕. Usually, the NIH gives many researchers a slice of the pie, but this year they decided to just give a few researchers the whole pie. The data show that, disproportionately, early career researchers went hungry. We need Congress to stop NIH multi-year funding mandates.

Jonathan Wosen@jonathanwosen.bsky.social · 8mo ago

A Trump administration change to how the National Institutes of Health awards grants has sharply reduced early-stage investigators’ odds of securing funding, new data from the agency show. Teamed up with @aniloza.bsky.social for this @statnews.com story www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/n...

www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...

NIH shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs

Special Report: The NIH has shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs.

statnews.com

Please, if your senator is on the appropriations committee (ME, WA, KY, IL, AK, RI, SC, NH, KS, OR, ND, DE, AR, HI, WV, WI, LA, CT, MS, MD, TN, NM, AL, MI, NY, OK, GA, NE, SD) contact them TODAY to urge them to prevent this devastating policy from destroying the next 5 years of research funding

Rod Rahimi@rodrahimi.bsky.social · last yr.

“The Senate Committee on Appropriations is scheduled to release its proposal for NIH’s 2026 budget later this week…The committee could include language that would prohibit the multiyear funding plan or extend the timeline for the transition.”🧪

New Science story about multi-year funding and it potential catastrophic consequences www.science.org/content/arti... 1/n

Odds of winning NIH grants plummet as new funding policy and spending delays bite

Funding multiyear grants up front will sharply cut number of investigators receiving awards

science.org

This will be devastating

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · last yr.

New, from an anonymous NIH insider: Trump is being pushed to spend more NIH money. The White House is ordering NIH to do multi-year budgets for awards. This budget trick means fewer awards, fewer labs funded, and lower paylines for researchers. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/alert-the-...

PO just confirmed that our 5th percentile R01 is not getting funded. Past NCI Payline at 4 percent. Cant believe it.

HAPPY 75th, NSF! We’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of NSF’s most transformative accomplishments—innovations that have shaped our world and continue to drive progress in health, technology, the environment, and beyond. Read on 🧵(1/11):

We got what I believe to be close to a "perfect" NSF score after our first submission--three "Excellent" reviews, highly competitive. The only minor weakness was that we could reduce our budget. It won't be funded. There is no path forward. I'm devastated.

must be incredibly frustrating and disheartening to have federal funding that was promised to you for important work suddenly and arbitrarily ripped away

Best of Dying Twitter@bestofdyingtwit.bsky.social · last yr.

“In light of the President's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately”

Deadline EXTENDED! Mentors and scholars can apply for #CLGSMI until FRIDAY, JUNE 6th! ➡️ cientificolatino.com/gsmi Don't miss out! The GSMI program supports applicants through 1-on-1 mentorship, fee waivers, professional development, and community building. 🩷

SCOOP— FEMA essential functions are at "high risk" of not functioning properly just days before hurricane season because of staffing shortages, per a recent internal memo obtained by The Handbasket. These deficiencies "may disrupt life-saving and life-sustaining program delivery." Full story here:

FEMA at 'high risk' of disrupting 'life-saving' disaster relief, per internal memo

The agency in charge of mitigating disasters is in the midst of its own.

thehandbasket.co

My trainee just sent me this notification from the NIH about a pending F31 application. We knew it was likely to come, but it still hurt to read the words.

I’m in @thebulwark.com! Writing about how RFK’s idea of disability — from vaccine-preventable disease to autism and beyond — is out of sync with disabled Americans’ reality. www.thebulwark.com/p/rfk-jr-doe...

What RFK Jr. Doesn’t Understand About Disability

The HHS secretary’s ignorance of the political history of disability shows he is the last person who should have a role in shaping its future.

thebulwark.com