Trump Abruptly Cancels Crucial Science Reviews at NIH, World's Largest Public Funder of Biomedical Research

[Judi Lynn]

January 24, 2025

4 min read

President Trump has placed an indefinite suspension on research grant reviews and travel at the National Institutes of Health and appears to have erased diversity programming pages at the agency’s website

By Max Kozlov & Nature magazine

Confusion and anxiety is rippling through the US health-research community this week following Donald Trump taking office as the 47th US president. His administration has abruptly cancelled research-grant reviews, travel and trainings for scientists inside and outside the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public biomedical funder. Adding to the worry: the Trump team appears to have deleted entire webpages about diversity programmes and diversity-related grants from the agency’s site.

The cancelling of meetings and travel is part of a pause in external communications issued on 21 January by the NIH’s parent organization, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Researchers who spoke to Nature say that although a short, daylong pause in communications at US agencies has occurred in the past when new administrations have started, to reorient strategy, the reach and length of the Trump team’s — it is set to last until at least 1 February — is unprecedented. Without advisory-committee meetings, the NIH cannot issue research grants, temporarily freezing 80% of the agency’s US$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, Illinois, 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”, particularly for early-career researchers, LaBonne adds.

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

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

More:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-cancels-science-reviews-at-nih-worlds-largest-public-biomedical/