174 scientists either at the NIH or funded by the NIH have won the Nobel prize. https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/nobel-l...
Odds are if you or someone you know has been treated with ... Any kind of modern medicine ... You have personally been impacted by NIH. That ignores the epidemiological knock on effects that we all benefit from oh and the whole "understanding of biological systems".
But screw it, they need to get in line with the party.
Here's a really excellent piece on the guts of how NIH's processes work:
https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/distinguishing-real-...
> Another consequence of the communications pause, according to an NIH staffer involved with clinical trials at NIH's Clinical Center, is that agency staff cannot meet with patient groups or release newsletters or other information to recruit patients into trials. Another unknown is whether NIH researchers will still be allowed to submit papers to peer-reviewed journals.
That seems unnecessary at best.
My guess is what happening is influenced by and patterned after the Musk's Twitter initial period - getting rid of what Musk didn't like from the start, review and cuts/layoffs of what didn't pass the review.
With all the due respect to the science having been done at/with NIH, one can suspect that the bureaucracy there is out of control similar to what we see at academia. The huge sign that the things got really rotten is that NIH couldn't own its work in Wuhan on the coronavirus, and that Fauci needed preemptive pardon. So some dead tissue debriding seems to be in order.
I assume the NIH was singled out as some sort of vengeance for the CV19 response?
Hopefully they'll restore some semblance of order after the pound of flesh is theatrically exacted.
My issue is more with the CDC. Are there state institutions that can take up the slack locally? Asking for a friend with kids who wants to move to a place with a lower risk of getting measles
Pretty sure a bunch of statistics that might be used to argue against Republican talking points are going to disappear or not be updated. Maybe they won't even get to be collected. It's a lot easier to lie if you prevent scientists and health care professionals from undercutting you with inconvenient truths.
As someone who has worked in public health and epidemiology, this kind of open ended restriction is extremely concerning.
Also appears to undercut the whole free speech thing that President Trump supposedly supports, and that the constitution provides for in the first amendment.
Kinda telling the NIH to mask up
HHS suspended their association with the Eco health Alliance, so I'm not sure what vector is of worry.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/breaking-hhs-formally-de...
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-fai...
I am waiting to see what will happen with NASA, NSF... Obviously it's less important than health, but still thousands of people, lives.
> "The hiring freeze is governmentwide, whereas a pause on communications and travel appears to be limited to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent agency. Such pauses are not unprecedented when a new administration comes in."
Calm down, guys. It's transitional, and it's not unusual.
From the article:
> The hiring freeze is governmentwide, whereas a pause on communications and travel appears to be limited to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent agency. Such pauses are not unprecedented when a new administration comes in. But some NIH staff suggested these measures, which include pulling job ads and rescinding offers, are more extreme than any previously.
...
> Previous administrations have imposed communications pauses in their first days. And the administration of Barack Obama continued a cap on attendance at scientific meetings first imposed by the George W. Bush administration, which in some cases meant staff canceled trips to meetings.
> But an immediate, blanket ban on travel is unusual, says one longtime researcher in NIH's intramural program. “I don't think we've ever had this and it's pretty devastating for a postdoc or graduate student who needs to present their work and network to move ahead in their career,” the researcher says.
This is not an extraordinary event. It is not an attack on the NIH. It is a transitional pause, which is substantially normal when administrations change hands. The wailing and moaning is silly. Give it a week.
I can fix it:
s/NIH/DOD/
Likely many folks who depend on funding from NIH voted for Trump.
Feel sorry for those who didn’t vote for him. No sympathy for those who did.
It's scary to think that Trump seems to actually believe right wing media's black and white propaganda. The end point of this kind of anti-intellectual, anti-urban movement is something like Pol Pot's killing fields.
The USSR wasn't doomed by communism per se. it was doomed by prioritising ideology and politics over any other considerations. The US is now in the same doom-spiral.
> Even more troubling to many researchers is a pause on study sections that many received word of today. Without such meetings, NIH cannot make research awards.
Cancer and many other topics of research will be hurt by this.
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This seems more like a coup in developing countries as time goes by.
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For anyone that's been in corp/BigCo land for some time, this is the typical corp reboot playbook.
Pause all hiring, freeze travel and other casual expenditures, relook at all major initiatives/projects/programs, etc.
Definitely something (IMHO) worth doing every 5-7 years in any environment. Can't imagine what it will uncover in government where I'm guessing it hasn't happened in much longer in most cases.
Why do most people in this thread assume this move intends to politicalize the NIH? I don't think the administration thoroughly thought out the consequences of this decision, but that's a typical government move. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The overarching goal seems to be "Achieve more, more efficiently, with fewer resources".
But making that happen when there are 20+ levels of management between the guy doing the work and the guy making the rules seems impossible.
The travel part makes sense to me: as HN is pro-remote-work they should understand that these researchers can simply make their presentations via tele-attendance. The rest of the "refrain from releasing anything until a Presidential appointee can look at it first" seems very commissar-like. The HHS screwed the pooch on COVID, making a lot of nonsensical claims that ruined the reputation of public health in the population's eyes. I still don't like the idea of the Commissar reviewing every paper on bird-flu (our newest epidemic) but I can see the motivation.
Some of these changes, if continued and expanded, will likely have long-term negative effects on the US's position in science. I have my issues with NIH but to fix NIH requires subtlety. This seems more designed to "punish those liberal researchers" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_one%27s_nose_to_sp...