One Year After Leaving NIH One year ago, I left a job as a Program Official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that I had held for 22 years.

Play-by-play of how the NIH was demolished and left on the chopping room floor.

elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/one-year-a...

I have very occasionally been involved in the debate of wording in policy documents. Each time there is painful scrutiny of how each word will be interpreted by folks who aren't currently in the room. I'm struck by how everyone in this administration assumes nobody new will ever be in the room.

Highlighted in red: "Political interference is inappropriately shaping or interfering in the conduct, management, communication, or use of science for political advantage or such that it undermines impartiality, nonpartisanship, or professional judgement"

"HHS works to promote a culture of scientific integrity by creating an empowering environment for innovation and protecting scientists and the process of science from inappropriate interference. Scientific findings and products must not be suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and must not be subjected to political interference or inappropriate influence. The responsible and ethical conduct of research and other scientific activities requires an environment that is safe and free from harassment and discrimination" Highlighted in red are "suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes", "subjected to political interference", and "inappropriate influence."

"HHS works to promote a culture of scientific integrity by creating an empowering environment for innovation and protecting scientists and the process of science from inappropriate interference. Scientific findings and products must not be subjected to interference or inappropriate influence and must not be inappropriately suppressed, delayed, or altered. The responsible and ethical conduct of research and other scientific activities requires an environment that is safe and free from harassment and discrimination." Highlighted in green are "subjected to interference or inappropriate influence" and "inappropriately suppressed, delayed, or altered."

Text, with "political" highlighted in red to indicate removal: I. Protecting Scientific Processes Scientific integrity fosters "honest scientific investigation, open discussion, refined understanding, and a firm commitment to evidence" (OSTP 2010). It also enables consideration and documentation of differing scientific opinions. Practices that support scientific integrity may include peer review and open science. Science, and public trust in science, thrives in an environment that prevents political interference and inappropriate influence from impacting scientific data and analyses and their use in decision making. It is the policy of HHS to: 1. Prohibit political interference or other inappropriate influence in the design, proposal, conduct, review, management, evaluation, communication about, and use of scientific activities and scientific information. Prohibit inappropriate restrictions on resources and capacity that limit and reduce the availability of science and scientific products (e.g., manuscripts for scientific journals, presentations for workshops, conferences, and symposia) outside of normal budgetary or priority-setting processes or without scientific, legal, or security justification. 3. Require that leadership and management ensure that covered individuals engaged in scientific activities can conduct their work objectively, free from political interference or other inappropriate influence, and free from retaliation.

HHS just published an update to its Scientific Integrity Policy. Notably, it has removed the concept of political interference, and no longer calls it out as something specifically to be prevented.
www.hhs.gov/sites/defaul... (deletions in red, insertions in green)

🧪

Test from webpage: "Protecting Scientific Processes. This section prohibits political interference and other inappropriate influence, requires reasonable efforts to ensure the fidelity of the scientific record, and requires research integrity and responsible conduct of research." "Political" is highlighted in green to indicate it is still there.

The webpage appears not to have been updated to reflect the policy change yet: www.hhs.gov/programs/res...

See the previous versions at the Internet Archive: web.archive.org/web/20260000...

Text, all highlighted in green to indicate insertion: 2. Support the publication of raw data and code that contributes to research outcomes in publicly accessible repositories where feasible and consistent with applicable security, privacy, and confidentiality requirements and encourage clear, detailed reporting of methodologies. 3. Support practices that enhance the falsifiability of hypotheses, such as pre-registration of study protocols, use of appropriate control groups, and transparent reporting of all results, including null or negative findings. Falsifiable hypotheses are those that can be tested and potentially disproven through empirical evidence.

Other changes include various policies driven by both positive science reform and the weaponized version of it represented by the "Gold Standard Science" executive order.

Highlighted in red: "Political interference is inappropriately shaping or interfering in the conduct, management, communication, or use of science for political advantage or such that it undermines impartiality, nonpartisanship, or professional judgement"

"HHS works to promote a culture of scientific integrity by creating an empowering environment for innovation and protecting scientists and the process of science from inappropriate interference. Scientific findings and products must not be suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and must not be subjected to political interference or inappropriate influence. The responsible and ethical conduct of research and other scientific activities requires an environment that is safe and free from harassment and discrimination" Highlighted in red are "suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes", "subjected to political interference", and "inappropriate influence."

"HHS works to promote a culture of scientific integrity by creating an empowering environment for innovation and protecting scientists and the process of science from inappropriate interference. Scientific findings and products must not be subjected to interference or inappropriate influence and must not be inappropriately suppressed, delayed, or altered. The responsible and ethical conduct of research and other scientific activities requires an environment that is safe and free from harassment and discrimination." Highlighted in green are "subjected to interference or inappropriate influence" and "inappropriately suppressed, delayed, or altered."

Text, with "political" highlighted in red to indicate removal: I. Protecting Scientific Processes Scientific integrity fosters "honest scientific investigation, open discussion, refined understanding, and a firm commitment to evidence" (OSTP 2010). It also enables consideration and documentation of differing scientific opinions. Practices that support scientific integrity may include peer review and open science. Science, and public trust in science, thrives in an environment that prevents political interference and inappropriate influence from impacting scientific data and analyses and their use in decision making. It is the policy of HHS to: 1. Prohibit political interference or other inappropriate influence in the design, proposal, conduct, review, management, evaluation, communication about, and use of scientific activities and scientific information. Prohibit inappropriate restrictions on resources and capacity that limit and reduce the availability of science and scientific products (e.g., manuscripts for scientific journals, presentations for workshops, conferences, and symposia) outside of normal budgetary or priority-setting processes or without scientific, legal, or security justification. 3. Require that leadership and management ensure that covered individuals engaged in scientific activities can conduct their work objectively, free from political interference or other inappropriate influence, and free from retaliation.

HHS just published an update to its Scientific Integrity Policy. Notably, it has removed the concept of political interference, and no longer calls it out as something specifically to be prevented.
www.hhs.gov/sites/defaul... (deletions in red, insertions in green)

An infinite number of monkeys could not produce this sentence: "While receiving a McDonald’s food delivery to the Oval Office, the president told reporters that he posted a photo that depicted him as a robed, Jesus-like figure because he thought it had depicted him as a physician."

A text I wrote the other day:

With all of this, it is key to understand that ALL of this research - including salaries for graduate students, postdocs, staff, faculty, etc. and consumables - HAVE to be covered by grants.

There is _no_ support from host institutions to ensure research continues or jobs are saved. None.

From our perspective, a few examples of what this looks like:

1️⃣ One NIH U01 program canceled - "unsafe for Americans" (CREID).
2️⃣ One CDC U01 program, budget cut ~80%.
3️⃣ One NIH U19 program, NOA delayed by four months - work stopped.
4️⃣ No U-funding opportunities to apply for for over a 1 year.

Dear Member of Congress: The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) are deeply grateful for the longstanding bipartisan support from Congress for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We want to inform you of current and likely impacts of delays and changes in funding policies and procedures for NIH grants. Our concerns relate to the following areas within NIH: • Massive reduction in notice of funding opportunities • Delays in funding processes and inadequate capacity to administer grants • Increase in forward funding of multiyear awards in year one • Delays and potential lapses in funding for large clinical trial networks and clinical trial units Lack of transparency around permitted international collaborative partners for research projects • Disproportionate impact of grant terminations on vulnerable populations, especially women and people of color

U.S. infectious disease research is on the brink. Without immediate action from Congress, much of it will cease to exist within a year.

For example👇

1️⃣ No collaborative RFAs posted for >1 year (normal: many / year).
2️⃣ No foreign collaborators allowed on grants.

🧪🪦 www.idsociety.org/globalassets...

DOGGETT: Doesn't your budget propose another 12% cut for NIH?

VOUGHT: Most of what you said is untrue. NIH was not cut at all--

D: My Q is don't you propose another 12% cut?

VOUGHT: We propose a cut

D: Is it your feeling that we just can't afford to invest more in doing something about cancer?

When asked on airplane flights what I did for a living, I would often say "I work for you" (not original to me) and then explain. These conversations generally went well.

Side note: Early in my career, I would say I was a chemistry professor. People almost asked to change seats...

The massive drop would come from two sources:

1. overall RPG budget cut (-10.2%); and

2. more multi-year funding, see, e.g., 146% increase in "competing average cost", which means new grants will cost more bc they'll be funded for multiple years. Effect is to reduce the # of grants NIH can make.

Straight from the horse's mouth:

If Trump's proposed $5B cut to NIH were enacted in FY27, the number of new NIH research grants would drop **47%**

To be clear, this is from a document justifying the request. It's what they *want*. They think this is good.

officeofbudget.od.nih.gov/pdfs/FY27/br...

As promised, here’s my tax day rant.

For 99% of taxpayers, the IRS already has the data to send you an almost fully completed 1040 for you to add a few pieces of data to, automatically recalculate, be done.

It doesn’t because of Intuit.

Oh man deep in the "more" is native parallelization of {renv} installations. Huzzah! Thanks @kevinushey.bsky.social

Please, beat us at predicting population trends. Fun game to test your intuition and see how you compare to trained models!

There's a parallel concept of how to represent rolling forecast horizons and updated forecasts. I wonder if anyone has integrated these from a tooling or object type perspective.

reviser: Analyzing Real-Time Data Revisions in R A short introduction to reviser for analyzing real-time data vintages and revisions in R.

I find the {reviser} @ropensci.org 📦 by Mark Burri + Philipp Wegmueller interesting. It shows how economists deal with a problem that epidemiologists grapple with a lot: revisions of past time series ropensci.org/blog/2026/04... #rstats @seabbs.bsky.social bs.bsky.social @zsusswein.bsky.social

Threats to Library Funding End With Settlement by Trump Administration

"The settlement...affirms that the agency will continue issuing grants and operating its programs...The Trump administration reaffirmed that it had reinstated all previously canceled grants...and reversed all staff reductions."

🎉✊ www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/a...

Excellent tweetorial by @ericjpedersen.bsky.social on Simon Wood’s new Neighborhood Cross Validation smoothness selection method, which is especially useful when fitting data with temporal and spatial dependence among observations

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing on 1 April of Tomáš Kalibera, a valuable member of the R Core Team for close to 10 years, after a short but aggressive illness.

Tomáš is survived by his wife and 1 year old son. A full obituary will be posted in due time.

Plot comparing awardees and honorable mentions by field of study

The folks on the GRFP subreddit have also made an interesting plot, comparing awardees to honorable mentions by field: www.reddit.com/r/GRFPApps/c...

2,599 applicants offered NSF GRFP awards! Congrats to all the NSF GRFP award winners and recipients of honorable mention. https://www.research.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwardeeList

Massive and important positive news...

#NSF #GRFP awards are out.

2,599 awards!
+
1,440 Honorable Mentions.

A significant boost from last year.

Congratulations to the winners (and HM-s)!

& many thanks to the reviewers & program officers who made this possible.

www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

Plot showing GRFP awards by directorate shows a big dip last year and major increases for engineering and biology (though this only brings it back to parity with 2024).

The NSF GRFP is now out! There are 2,599 awardees, which is the most ever—and a big shift from last year which initially halved awardees (1,000 awardees + an additional 500).

I've thrown together a plot to break down the changes by field.

www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

The last time I tried to engage with Jay Bhattacharya in dialogue I ended up on administrative leave. 🤷‍♀️

GRFP awards are out and truly a bright light in a troubling time. 2,600 awards!!!!

Congrats to Symbiommunity lab members Carly Travers (MS student; awarded) and Kara James (PhD student, HM). Both had planned to wait a year but pulled out all the stops to put in strong applications!

Heartbreaking news. 😞