A diagram showing that 24 annually funded grants becomes only 15 funded grants if 50% of the funds for competitive grants are used for multi-year funding.
I was preparing for a talk I gave last evening to a lay audience and came up with this graphic to explain multi-year funding and why it leads to fewer competitive awards and funding investigators and projects.
6/8
This is a reference to multi-year funding and this statement is complete horseshit.
Early stage investigators are not preferentially receiving multi-year funded grants and often need longer grants and more stability rather than the ability to spend more upfront.
5/8
I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.
If you are as infuriated as you read this as I am, know that Congress not only has the power to fix the abuse of the Shadow Docket but also that the legislation is already drafted. We just need to get it to the floor. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
Senior professors - if you want to help your junior colleagues in these times, I am begging you, review our papers. I have done 25 manuscript reviews in the last 6 years. But my own manuscript is stalled out waiting for reviewers. Relatedly, I won't be doing any more reviews until tenure. 🧪
My quote of the day
It is not a Pandora's box that science opens; it is, rather, a treasure chest. We, humanity, can choose whether or not to take out the discoveries and use them, and for what purpose.
John Sulston
This episode on sports betting 😳😳😳
“If you gamble for long enough, you will lose money, unless you're in a very small percentage of people who are either using inside information or really good proprietary models or are just really lucky.”
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...
@statnews.com conducted a national survey of NIH-funded researchers and found that, a year after Trump's return, many scientists are reeling, with some closing labs entirely. ‘This is like the Titanic,' one respondent told me. For full details, see our special report
www.statnews.com/2026/03/19/n...
In my division, we gave some input on which grants to MYF. But it was more like: which grants can we MYF that will do least harm to 1) the grantee - MYF limits timeframe to 4 yrs plus a brief NCE & 2) the overall budget.
It was never, let’s MYF this grant bc it is best for the science or grantee.
Fantastic new paper casting doubt on explainability of explainable AI. To explain complex machine learning algorithms you need reproducibility of the explanation at a minimum academic.oup.com/ehjdh/articl... #machinelearning #Statistics #StatsSky @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social
13% success rates for FY2025 grant awards.
NIH finally releases some FY2025 success rate data drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/18/n...
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya promised a House Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday that, despite the sluggish pace of grant awards, the agency will spend its full budget by the end of the 2026 fiscal year. My latest for @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2026/03/17/n...
This Russell Vought, trying to usurp the power of the purse.
Congress and the people have made it abundantly clear that they want to fund science.
But Vought keeps trying to steal those funds.
www.science.org/content/arti...
Writing out a conversation I’ve been having a lot at this conference:
Things in US science are far, far worse than people know.
Far worse than even other scientists know.
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Science needs more than funding. It needs integrity.
@standupforscience.bsky.social
the most annoying shift in my academic career
The U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office.
A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies. Read more: https://scim.ag/4boPkq8
The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed.
For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com
🧪
Great new piece by @melodyschreiber.com in The Guardian about NIH/CDC Director Bhattacharya .
In it, I talk about asking Bhattacharya in January about a recent issue affecting the affordability of healthcare for thousands of early career researchers on the NIH campuses.
Which is why we are rallying NATIONWIDE TODAY!!!
Visit standupforscience.net/march7 to attend your local National Day of Action Rally or host a pop-up rally if there is no rally near you!
LET'S GET OUT THERE!!!
#March7
#standupforscience
#science
#savescience
#rally
Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302
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.
Current NIH leadership want you to think they are using rigorous, consistent & scientific processes to screen studies to align them with agency priorities.
But the process that they have put down on paper is a sham.
It’s important to know NIH is not following its own guidance. Here’s why:
🧵1/
Hard not to worry that this isn't another attempt by OMB's Russell Vought to override Congress's power of the purse.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Another great essay from my colleague Elizabeth Ginexi on how NIH is being restructured by the White House (Russell Vought) despite Congress rejecting such moves.
open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...
What do Congress's top appropriators say?
“This is a drastic departure from historical practice,” @delauro.house.gov told @nature.com.
DeLauro and @murray.senate.gov demanded that OMB release funds, as is required by law.
(The top Republicans, Rep Tom Cole & Sen Susan Collins didn't respond.)
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. 🧵👇
Screenshot from an NIH website reading: "Table 1 shows the number of principal investigators (PIs) applying for or receiving an R01-equivalent grant in FYs 2021 to 2025, disaggregated by career stage. NIH supported 1,423 and 1,144 ESIs in FYs 2024 and 2025, respectively. The decrease seen in FY 2025 may likely be due in part to NIH implementing a requirement to use 50% of its remaining competing Research Project Grant (RPG) funds (starting in June 2025) for full-year funded competing RPGs, which was expected to lead to fewer awards and support fewer researchers overall."
Check this out straight from the NIH website, acknowledging that multiyear funding was likely responsible for a 20% decrease in early stage investigators.
And that it was expected.
A strange approach for someone so committed to the next generation of scientists.
grants.nih.gov/news-events/...
