NIH hit with freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring

https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-hits-nih-devastating-freezes-meetings-travel-communications-and-hiring

by carbocation • 1 year ago

284 384 1 year ago

This seems more like a coup in developing countries as time goes by.

If you trust the election results, and I generally do because I have no proof otherwise, then the American people voted for this. But it certainly looks like an authoritarian power transfer.

scarecrowbob3• 1 year ago

I am affected by this and I didn't vote for this. It's easy to say that "the American People" voted for this, but it's not correct to say that I am personally being affected by my bad choices.

I think the elections were "fair", for what its worth- I just don't agree that "fairness" makes me blame-worthy when I face the consequences of other folks actions.

nickff• 1 year ago

Authoritarian power transfers usually involve (immediate) executions, or at least the imprisonment/exile of important people from the previous government/administration/regime, to stabilize the new regime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Political_Surviva...

UncleOxidant2• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, a good chunk of people who voted for him really didn't pay much attention beyond him promising to lower prices. But this is the electorate we have - a lot of them just can't be bothered with much detail as attention spans are short these days.

computerthings3• 1 year ago

If someone clicks on "click here to update your password" in a phishing email, are they choosing what actually happens, or what they thought would happen? Even if they should have known, and could have known, I think it's objectively true that they didn't.

umanwizard8• 1 year ago

*23% of American people voted for this.

vcryan• 1 year ago

Every 4 years, American voters get to choose between garbage and trash.

sundaeofshock• 1 year ago

Trump spent a huge amount of his time during the election disavowing Project 2025. Did people vote for a change in government? Yes, but they didn’t vote for this this theocratic authoritarian bullshit.

swatcoder2• 1 year ago

If you trust the election results, and I generally do because I have no proof otherwise, then the American people voted for this.

No, if you trust the election results, it's a legitimate election by defined process and there are no grounds to contest it.

But "The American people voted for this" is a distinct, strong, affirmative statement that doesn't hold.

The people that voted for this are the people that voted for it, and even among the people who voted for the incoming administration (who only represent a third or so of eligible American voters and an even smaller share of American people), this isn't what many of them were voting for.

paxys• 1 year ago

Looking at history authoritarian power transfers usually start with a vote, or at least wide spread public support.

fpgaminer• 1 year ago

It doesn't look like, it is. e.g. violent coup and Nazi salutes during inauguration. Are people expecting the rise of authoritarianism to look different or something? This is the exact same fascist playbook that's been run every time. I really thought WW2 would have taught humanity as a whole the lesson but apparently not.

derbOac• 1 year ago

Americans also voted for their US Senators and Representatives.

It's funny how these discussions forget about that, which is part of the problem.

It's also worth remembering how the Trump campaign consistently denied Project 2025, and ridiculed those who suggested it was their agenda. Maybe it won't go there but so far it seems to be headed in that direction, and if so actively lying about your agenda raises questions about exactly what the American electorate was voting for.

NelsonMinar• 1 year ago

It's a stretch to say the American people voted for gutting our health research capabilities.

pstuart2• 1 year ago

I'm not so sure about them.

https://old.reddit.com/r/somethingiswrong2024/

tzs• 1 year ago

Trump got 49.8% of the vote. 50.2% went to other candidates (48.32% Harris, 0.56% Stein, 0.49% Kennedy, 0.42% Chase, 0.42% others).

If anyone is curious, here are the Presidents since the 19th century who got at least 50% of the vote:

  Biden
  Obama (both terms)
  Second Bush (second term)
  First Bush
  Reagan (both terms)
  Carter
  Nixon (second term)
  Johnson
  Eisenhower (both terms)
  Second Roosevelt (all four terms)
  Hoover
  Coolidge
  Harding
  Taft
  First Roosevelt
  McKinley

The lowest since 1900 is Wilson's first term at 41.8%, followed by Clinton's first term at 43%, Nixon's first term at 43.4%, and Trump's first term at 46%.

You might think that Wilson at 41.8% must have lost the popular vote but actually he beat the person with the second highest popular vote total by over 14%. That was back when the US had more than two viable parties. The vote went 41.84% to Wilson (Democrat), 27.4% to Teddy Roosevelt (Progressive), 23.17% to the incumbent Taft (Republican), 5.99% to Debs (Socialist), and the rest to a few others.

Similar with Clinton's 43%. That was about 5% more than second place. That year Ross Perot running as an independent got 18.91%.

Same with Nixon. His 43.42% was the biggest slice of the popular vote, followed by Humphrey at 42.72%. George Wallace running for the American Independent party got 13.53%.

UltraSane3• 1 year ago

The media has been sane washing Trump for the last 9 years. If Trump had been treated like the joke he has always been he wouldn't have been elected.

whyenot2• 1 year ago

I keep on thinking maybe it's time to move somewhere else. I'm a first generation American, so I'd just be doing what my parents did before me. The problem is, I have no idea what country I would move to.

phkahler6• 1 year ago

Hang in there, this is a long overdue correction. It's gonna over correct a bit, but then things should be better than before. The rhetoric of Trump being a dictator is way overblown. If this didn't happen we'd be heading toward bankruptcy around the time your kids grow up.

delichon• 1 year ago

If you prefer the policies of the Democratic Party and have no special attachment here, then Canada or any European country is probably a level up for you.

marcus_holmes• 1 year ago

I think most of the rest of the world is facing the same issues, just a few years behind the USA.

Except where the culture is completely different, e.g. East Asia. But they have different problems.

Australia is definitely facing the same problems and the same emerging far-right populist anti-immigration narrative as a result. Though to be fair, Australia has always had a pretty strong authoritarian populist far-right anti-immigration thing going on.

The one that has totally surprised me is Germany. Seeing them go down that same road again is genuinely shocking.

ainiriand• 1 year ago

Ireland.

int_19h7• 1 year ago

New Zealand is not the richest first world country, but when this global shitshow escalates into a major international war it'll probably be one of the safer places around.

bitlax• 1 year ago

Except it's not a coup and it's not a developing country but ok.

Drink some water.

austinjp• 1 year ago

It is most assuredly a coup. It just took a few years rather than a few days.

grahamj7• 1 year ago

It's not developing anymore, that's for sure. Now it's devolving.

1oooqooq2• 1 year ago

"just business as usual". i guess after you work hard to normalize these interventions on the thrid world, it becomes second nature here too.

generalizations5• 1 year ago

Remember what happened to Trump after his first term. He's extremely invested in making sure that he won't be raided/arrested/etc again at the end of this term.

The power structures that tried that the first time won't be here in 4 years...his personal freedom depends on it.

sebazzz3• 1 year ago

If he is still around. He is older than when Biden started at his term.

WesternWind3• 1 year ago

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.

duxup3• 1 year ago

Free speech, states rights, government accountability, any serious sense of libertarianism and so on are all with the caveat of “if I like it” as far as the current Republican Party is concerned.

UncleOxidant2• 1 year ago

Also appears to undercut the whole free speech thing that President Trump supposedly supports

Saying he supports "free speech" and actually doing it are two different things. In reality he supports speech that supports his preferred narrative of reality and opposes speech that doesn't.

762236• 1 year ago

If you've worked as a scientist, why not gather evidence before jumping to conclusions? For example, you could inquire of the administration why they did this. They're actually putting in quite an effort at transparency.

ayakang31415• 1 year ago

Because for some people, this is not a scientific peer-reviewed discussion, but rather typical conversation normal people have over dinner table with gut feelings and limited information. Just assume that "I believe", "in my opinion", "AFAIK" are implied for statements like above.

WesternWind3• 1 year ago

My concerns about the future are based on what President Trump did in 2017 with the NIH budget (attempting to cut it 22%)¹ thus preventing important scientific research funding, as well as removal of covid-19 health statistics from the CDC in 2020² in the middle of a major pandemic.

Unfortunately, given that he is now holding the highest office in the US, it's a well known fact that Donald Trump lies constantly both when in office³ and when campaigning⁴, and I lack all faith in his administration's supposed transparency.

1.https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-plan-reduce-over... 2.https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/16/coronavirus... 3. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/16/politics/fact-check-dale-top-... 4. https://www.salon.com/2024/11/09/six-big-lies-that-won-the-e...

linsomniac3• 1 year ago

statistics that might be used to argue against Republican talking points are going to disappear

So, you're saying the WHOLE map will be drawn with Sharpie? ;-)

duxup3• 1 year ago

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.

arcticbull2• 1 year ago

None of this is necessary, that's the point.

crooked-v• 1 year ago

Or to put it another way, "The cruelty is the point."

monero-xmr4• 1 year ago

The scientific establishment has had 2 major crises recently - the replication crisis, and the totally insane unscientific and politicized handling of COVID.

Additionally there is undeniably a lot of waste, nepotism / back scratching, and completely ludicrous funded social “science”.

While what’s happening now may wind up bad, I have seen very little push from the establishment itself to do anything to restore public faith in the current system. Trump is the executioner, but the conviction was handed down before he came around.

@dang why is this flagged?

zzzeek2• 1 year ago

The point is to create chaos and panic so that , after a sufficient period of general suffering, the government can come back with a "solution to the problem" which is typically some vastly inferior approach with heavy privatization and corruption built in, but as the stakeholders are desperate for relief they have no choice but to accept.

This is how you tear the government down and replace it with corrupt oligarchic interests

johnnyanmac11• 1 year ago

Officials have also ordered a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and an indefinite ban on travel.

I thought trump was bringing American jobs back? So far he's impacted thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of jobs in 2 days, and hasn't even made a plan for how to get americans hired.

(yes, a miniscule piece of me is enjoying how fast the Schedenfreude came. But still, I do mostly want to focus on fixing the country over pointing fingers).

kurthr2• 1 year ago

Yeah, sounds right. Let's list the unnecessary drug treatments funded directly by NIH.

The treatment of HIV with AZT and other HAART drugs. AIDS is caused by "poppers" not HIV, duh!

Treatment of breast cancer and Myeloid Leukemia and with Herceptin and Imatinib. Fake cancers!

Vaccines for HPV and Corona viruses are useless, because horse de-wormers treat both! Also, they're not real because COVID and cervical cancer are harmless.

It's time to stop the insanity and realize that jade eggs in your bum are the real solution.

Other useless drugs funded by NIH: Depo-Provera, Taxol, L-DOPA, Propranolol, Tagamet, Embrel, Tamoxifen, Cyclosporin, Warfarin, Methotrexate, Hydrocortisone.

UltraSane3• 1 year ago

It is a exercise of power for the sake of power. The pointlessness of it is the point.

rUsHeYaFuBu• 1 year ago

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.

peppertree• 1 year ago

[flagged]

jcgrillo2• 1 year ago

[flagged]

nradov• 1 year ago

The position they've taken is that they want to shift cancer funding from treatment to prevention. I have no idea whether this makes any sense or if it will actually happen but that is the current messaging.

yongjik• 1 year ago

Democrats need to put these messages out hard. If they win the 2026 election we might even have a chance at putting a brake on Trump's idiocy. (I know, I know, trust Democrats to shoot their own foot in the most crucial moments, but one can hope...)

PaulKeeble2• 1 year ago

Cancer, infectious diseases, brain disorders, HIV and the RECOVER programme for Long Covid. All have significant NIH funding and will be halted by this.

Lots of smaller funded conditions as well, the NIH does a lot both from a clinical research and a public health perspective.

londons_explore• 1 year ago

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.

phkahler6• 1 year ago

So cut 15 levels of management. Budget cuts to match. Carry on.

tptacek16• 1 year ago

As long as they're not fucking up the NIH grantmaking process, I (ruthlessly) don't care, and am not going to allocate attention to it. But once they do start fucking up grants, they're throwing a monkeywrench in basically all American therapeutic research and basic science, which is a big problem, since one of the government's primary missions should be to set in motion whatever things will end human cancer.

groby_b3• 1 year ago

There are, of course, not 20+ levels of management. The average fan-out in the federal government is 1:7 to 1:10, with ~2.5 million employees total.

That strongly implies 7-8 levels of hierarchy, on average.

avs733• 1 year ago

What makes you think that is the actual goal rather than just what you are being told the goal is?

tptacek16• 1 year ago

Here's a really excellent piece on the guts of how NIH's processes work:

https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/distinguishing-real-...

chevman• 1 year ago

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.

ross23• 1 year ago

While I agree with the sentiment that continual evaluation of how any organization operates is a good thing, there is an extensive corpus of studies on the fallacies of treating the management of public services like private business.

There is a good reason why there isn’t much (successful) precedent around this type of thing being done before.

txomon• 1 year ago

I would argue with that looking at Argentina. I do see however there is not enough data to be biased against any side, but disruptive changes in management are in my perception more effective on changing the status quo.

Achieving change against current incentives with politically mindful measures I'd say is very time consuming and slow.

In regards to your point I agree that treating public services as companies that can't be running at a loss is been demonstrated to be bad, but there is a fine line between trying to make public services profitable VS trying to make them more efficient.

travisporter5• 1 year ago

Agree with pausing hiring and causal expenditures. Why block external communication? What does that do

lanstin• 1 year ago

Having worked in big corporations and been married to and friends with a number of NIH folks, I can assure you that the government has 10x the openness of even the most transparent corporation, has a bunch of people trying to maximize the return on all expenditures related to their research, fanatical abilities to repair and reuse equipment for new things, and a base line of people who have consciously dedicated to service for the country rather than maximizing their personal prestige and wealth.

Their budgets are debated in TV. Imagine that in a big corp. it is simply false to say this organized attack on research is anything than a spasm of anti-science ideology.

dekhn13• 1 year ago

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...

whyenot2• 1 year ago

This is surgery with a butter knife. It's going to cause a lot of unnecessary disruption and pain which could have been avoided with a more nuanced approach. What we are seeing with this and some of the new administration's other initiatives, is the abandonment of US soft power in the world.

dekhn13• 1 year ago

Huh, I like the way you phrased that: "abandonment of US soft power in the world". But I think there is also punitive aspect: they are intentionally "punishing" the people at NIH they perceive as being liberal and favoring other countries.

grahamj7• 1 year ago

Even if these idiots wanted subtlety they're too stupid to make it happen. They just want to do big, bold things but have no idea how to actually make anything better.

duxup3• 1 year ago

I sometimes like to imagine if I was president ... how hard would it be to find someone in a given department who could lead it and know better than the communication restrictions as we have here.

Granted, I fear the folks in charge now DO know better and the side effects are intentional ... but I wonder if it would be possible to pick someone and get it reasonably right.

UltraSane3• 1 year ago

This is what happens when you let a horse in the hospital. It wrecks stuff

ashoeafoot4• 1 year ago

Which the voters in majority voted for as they considered stuff already wrecked for them

narrator• 1 year ago

As the token Trump supporter on HN, let me give you what I think's going on. I think they are doing an ideological purge. They want to get rid of anyone promoting transgender science. I think RJK JR. wants to get rid of anyone he thinks is against his MAHA agenda.

They want to get rid of any pandemic scaremongering too. Peter Hoetz said that Bird Flu will start once the trump administration takes office for example.[1]. Hoetz who is a major figure in the vaccine research industry said that "starting January 21st we've got some big stuff coming down the pike starting with H5N1..." and after the Fauci pardon anything is possible.

The bird flu outbreak had been behind a lot of food inflation. I wouldn't put it past people on the radical left who want to hurt the Trump administration to hype the bird flu pandemic to drive up food prices through mass culling of livestock.

[1] https://x.com/TaraBull808/status/1865026704504426860?t=hZnEk...

pseudalopex6• 1 year ago

As the token Trump supporter on HN

In a minority most likely. Not even close to alone.

Peter Hoetz said that Bird Flu will start once the trump administration takes office for example.[1].

No. He said we have big picture stuff coming down the pike starting January 21. Like a flu wide spread in birds already, that jumped species already, that could develop human to human transmission. He framed it clearly as a present danger the incoming administration would inherit. Even without the removed context about Kennedy's claims no vaccines are safe and effective and vaccines cause autism.

The bird flu outbreak had been behind a lot of food inflation. I wouldn't put it past people on the radical left who want to hurt the Trump administration to hype the bird flu pandemic to drive up food prices through mass culling of livestock.

Whoever the radical left are, they don't decide about culling livestock. What agenda do you think was behind the culls driving up food prices before the election? And do you expect tariffs and deportations to lower food prices?

mike_hearn• 1 year ago

NIH staff openly conspired against both the public and the President last time Trump was in charge in many different ways. What Fauci and his grantees did wasn't subtle, so the fixes aren't going to be subtle either: the NIH needs either to be abandoned entirely or it needs a massive purge and culture change.

Fundamentally a civilized society cannot tolerate bureaucracies that act like they did during COVID. Fauci is gone now but unfortunately the NIH as an institution is deserving of any and all damage Trump does to them. Frankly if I were in his shoes I'd be going much further than mere freezes.

guelo2• 1 year ago

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.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v22• 1 year ago

Doesn't it seem a tiny wee bit like a hyperbole?

guelo2• 1 year ago

Probably. But this political movement won't stop with this term. 2016 Trump was more moderate than today's Trump. The next time the movement is stopped it will come back even more ferociously, especially since the movement is fed constant propaganda about being aggrieved and revenge fantasies.

tclancy• 1 year ago

Dunno. Wasn’t there for the ramp up.

UniverseHacker6• 1 year ago

What I think we're re-discovering is that it's not so straightforward to tell while it's happening. I'm willing to bet during the rise of people like Mussolini, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, etc. many people were concerned, and many others were saying it was nothing and they were just being hyperbolic. However, it was the same with times when it didn't turn out like that.

What concerns me most about this, is the general attitude of entirely dehumanizing specific groups of people. That, I expect, is the crux that makes atrocities possible, and it is happening now.

tired_and_awake2• 1 year ago

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.

dekhn13• 1 year ago

NIH also played a big role in the creation of biotech industry (funding much of the basic research that set the foundation for amazing medical treatments). I guess we'll have to depend more on the largesse of billionaires.

chii4• 1 year ago

funding much of the basic research

it's unfortunate that these funding don't actually bring in profits with which to maintain and continue future funding. It's why i somewhat dislike the publicly funded research model, because the commercialization of basic research is what leads to profit in the future, and this part is poorly done by gov'ts (or very well done by private parties looking to profit off public research).

I say that to change the system, these basic research should have IP associated with it, by which if companies use it, they pay a royalty after they achieve profit of $X (where X can be decided based on the research itself). It's obvious that taxes aren't sufficient.

grahamj7• 1 year ago

Remember when Idiocracy was just a movie?

petesergeant• 1 year ago

I had a person on the other end of tech support tell me they’d _love_ to hear how my day was going as part of a script recently. Wasn’t Costco but still

notjoemama3• 1 year ago

$47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)

$47.4B is a significant amount of money. I don't know whether their expenditures are appropriate. I don't see that in the article either. Unless someone does know that can comment, the $47.4B is unaccounted for in coloquial dialog, is it not?

The hiring freeze is governmentwide
pause on communications and travel ... Such pauses are not unprecedented when a new administration comes in.

Hmm, seem like the author is fomenting malice by using ‘devastating’ in the title. Perhaps building a character judgement that might not actually be there, helping to draw anger and hate from people already opposed to the new administration?

NIH travel chief Glenda Conroy sent an email to senior agency officials early today notifying them of an “immediate and indefinite” suspension of all travel throughout HHS with few exceptions, such as currently traveling employees returning home. Researchers who planned to present their work at meetings must cancel their trips, as must NIH officials promoting agency programs off site or visiting distant branches of the agency. “Future travel requests for any reason are not authorized and should not be approved,” the memo said.

I guess someone needs to ask the question, how exactly is the NIH going to prevent people from "going home"? Does that mean simply that they will not be paying for their travel? Or for that matter, researchers who want to present their work must do it at their own cost or from approved unpaid time off?

I feel like someone is forgetting how hard the MAJORITY of US citizens have it. Inflation has hit non-wealthy people the most. They don't have jobs where they get paid travel or paid time off. While I don't mean to inject some form of class into the discussion, I do wonder what exactly are the things to be fearful of in this scenario. I'm just not seeing a worrying concern here given reality. Unless, there's a more rampant amount of fragility in the well paid health community? I'm sorry. I just don't get it.

AlotOfReading• 1 year ago

Have you ever worked in a government funded environment? Travel frugality is already the rule and has been for decades. This is going from "be frugal" to "don't".

dekhn13• 1 year ago

NIH pays for work travel. When a person is paid for NIH travel, it's bare bones (cheaper hotel, cheaper tickets). It's for work- you go, you work many long hours drinking shitty coffee. Maybe at the end of the day there is some fun at a restaurant/bar but it's not paid for in the per diem. It was brutal- typically, if I travelled on NIH or NSF or DOE dime, it was a red eye from California to Washington DC, take cheapest possible transport to the NIH offices, then turn around and return the same night, so that I could go to work the next day (to be productive with little sleep so I could keep my job).

As for "non-wealthy": most scientists are not well-compensated. They spent their 20s and 30s working for very little pay (for example, in grad school my pay was $25-33K/year in San Francisco, and even as a Staff Scientist at a national lab, there's no way I could afford to buy a house in the area). They work punishingly hard jobs competing with super-ambitious people for fairly small amounts of money. I don't really see what your point is; breaking the NIH is not going to fix wealth disparity in the US.

UniverseHacker6• 1 year ago

the $47.4B is unaccounted for in coloquial dialog, is it not?

Almost all of it is research grants for biomedical research, with priorities set by congress, e.g. they set what specific diseases, etc. should be worked on. This represents more than half of all funding for academic scientific research in the USA.

Unless, there's a more rampant amount of fragility in the well paid health community?

Most of this work is done by graduate students and postdocs, which are paid very little. Traveling to conferences is part of doing their job, but they generally couldn't afford to pay for it themselves. They are already required to keep travel expenses down to the point where the hotels are often dirty and unsafe- usually whatever is cheapest in town.

Grad students in the USA currently make about $34k/year and postdocs (with PhDs) about $60k/year in the USA. They're usually in high cost of living urban areas, and in practice, they're often expected to work 60-80 hour weeks if they want to produce enough to remain in academia. This works out to less than minimum wage in the places they are generally located.

When I was a graduate student, I made just enough to rent a single bedroom in a large group house full of strangers, and as a postdoc I had a 4 hour round trip daily commute to get to someplace I could afford to live.

serf• 1 year ago

would you expect double the nobels if you doubled their available resources?

another loaded question : do you believe the nih is the single government ran example of a perfectly lean and well managed agency without excess expenditure?

b112• 1 year ago

But screw it, they need to get in line with the party.

To be fair to both sides, I hear your right saying hiring has becone political. With DEI pledges for hiring.

Hiring should be merit baed, and not based upon politics either.

renewiltord6• 1 year ago

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.

PaulKeeble2• 1 year ago

In medical research there is an awful lot of tissue, blood and other samples that go into the NIH's work. They run numerous labs and biobanks and a part of what they do is transit samples and the personal and sometimes equipment to various labs across the country.

renewiltord6• 1 year ago

Certainly, and in Silicon Valley there is hardware, semiconductors, and other tangible items that go into work. But clearly that's not what we're discussing since the article says:

Today, the scientist encountered one group of early-career researchers who were scheduled to attend and present at a distant conference next week—presentations that are now impossible.

What's the big deal? Present via Zoom. We should probably cancel all conference travel.

jltsiren• 1 year ago

The actual presentations are usually the least important part of a conference. Most conferences would be better if you could cancel 80% of the program but still convince the same people to attend (and their employers to pay). Then there would be more time for informal discussions and ad hoc work, which often lead to new ideas and new collaborations.

renewiltord6• 1 year ago

I have heard on HN that ideation and collaboration does not decrease if everyone works remote.

BLKNSLVR• 1 year ago

What nonsensical claims did the HHS make about COVID?

UniverseHacker6• 1 year ago

Tele-attendance basically does not work for science conferences, as 99% of the value is from ad hoc in person discussions. When I attend science conferences I attend few if any of the talks, and instead network to form collaborations for future projects.

aliasxneo4• 1 year ago

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.

aaomidi5• 1 year ago

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

This quote does not apply in a place where the actor has specifically promised to be malicious.

Now, you may not see their promises as malicious and that is your prerogative. But that quote isn’t applicable for a ton of people when it comes to Trump.

aliasxneo4• 1 year ago

I would have to disagree with the criteria. More times than not, I've seen people who have promised maliciousness (AKA bullies) make really stupid decisions. It seems to go hand-in-hand in a lot of cases.

Either way, this seems like a political flip-flop, with the opposing party now putting on the tin hats. That's just the way it looks to me as an independent.

tptacek16• 1 year ago

I agree with you about this. I think it's worth calling out where the shoulder of the highway ends and the cliff begins, now that the guardrails have been (if temporarily) removed, but I'm optimistic that nobody is crazy enough to totally jam up the NIH given its importance to our economy and national security.

travisporter5• 1 year ago

If there is a new pandemic soon we will see it without any question. Hurricanes were redirected on a whim.

Onawa• 1 year ago

Hard to attribute it to stupidity and lack of planning when almost every executive order signed by Trump during his first days back in office are straight out of Project 2025.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_orders_in_...

Edit: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-executive-orders-proje...

_aavaa_• 1 year ago

As others have said, his actions are all straight from the project 2025 playbook. Go read page 284, it's very explicit about them viewing it as politicized and wanting to fix that (read actually politicize it):

"The incestuous relationship between the NIH, CDC, and vaccine makers—with all of the conflict of interest it entails—cannot be allowed to continue, and the revolving door between them must be locked. As Severino writes, “Funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid andunaccountable insiders at the NIH, many of whom stay in power for decades. The NIH monopoly on directing research should be broken.” What’s more, NIH has long “been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science.” The next HHS secretary should immediately put an end to the department’s foray into woke transgender activism."

int_19h7• 1 year ago

Because they've all been openly talking about taking revenge on NIH for the COVID lockdowns and support for transgender healthcare for a while now?

travisporter5• 1 year ago

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

schmookeeg• 1 year ago

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.

ericd2• 1 year ago

Sounds like it's happening in at least some other parts of the government, too. This order seems to have paused disbursement of even some already-committed funding:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/unle...

"Sec. 7. Terminating the Green New Deal. (a) All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58), including but not limited to funds for electric vehicle charging stations made available through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, and shall review their processes, policies, and programs for issuing grants, loans, contracts, or any other financial disbursements of such appropriated funds for consistency with the law and the policy outlined in section 2 of this order. Within 90 days of the date of this order, all agency heads shall submit a report to the Director of the NEC and Director of OMB that details the findings of this review, including recommendations to enhance their alignment with the policy set forth in section 2. No funds identified in this subsection (a) shall be disbursed by a given agency until the Director of OMB and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy have determined that such disbursements are consistent with any review recommendations they have chosen to adopt."

Dove• 1 year ago

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.

johnnyanmac11• 1 year ago

But some NIH staff suggested these measures, which include pulling job ads and rescinding offers, are more extreme than any previously.
halted midstream a training workshop for junior scientists, called off a workshop on adolescent learning minutes before it was to begin, and canceled meetings of two advisory councils. Panels that were scheduled to review grant proposals also received eleventh-hour word that they wouldn’t be meeting.
“People are just at a loss because they also don’t know what’s coming next. I have never seen this level of confusion and concern in people that are extremely dedicated to their mission,” the scientist says.
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.

"Usual" but overly extreme. Seems to fit 2025.

karaterobot• 1 year ago

FWIW, I was around (i.e. working on NIH funded grants) for the last transition, and I don't remember this happening. I agree and hope that it might not be an ominous sign, but I don't think it's the norm. We're being asked to pull out of not only conferences, but even out of cross-organizational Zoom chats that involve certain institutions. Where I work, the people who've been doing this longer than me are not saying "relax everybody, this is fine," they seem to be freaking out a little bit too.

zzzeek2• 1 year ago

Page 284 of Project 2025:

This event is entirely extraordinary and politicized. Nothing will be better "in a week". The actions being taken were telegraphed well ahead of time and were widely known to be part of a strategy to destroy the NIH and replace it with some kind of propaganda arm.

kazinator• 1 year ago

I can fix it:

  s/NIH/DOD/

sega_sai• 1 year ago

I am waiting to see what will happen with NASA, NSF... Obviously it's less important than health, but still thousands of people, lives.

1oooqooq2• 1 year ago

if musk et al cannot fill all the positions they have open with people leaving NIH, be sure NASA is certainly next.

aksss• 1 year ago

"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."

trhway• 1 year ago

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.

silexia• 1 year ago

The government grows like a cancer as it has no mechanism like bankruptcy to remove dead wood.

Agencies start out with a mission, then turn into a business, and finally become a con job. Most agencies are deep into the corrupt territory at this point.

fungiblecog• 1 year ago

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.

readthenotes1• 1 year ago

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...

nojvek• 1 year ago

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.

sandinmyjoints• 1 year ago

Can you be more specific -- who are you thinking of?

NIH hit with freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring

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