Researchers in the US have been blindsided by the Trump administration’s suspension of peer review at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) earlier this week after a hold was apparently placed on external communications and travel at the agency.
Matthew Hirschey, a cell biologist and biochemist at Duke University in North Carolina, was one of many academics left in the lurch. Hirschey, who has served as an ad hoc NIH grant reviewer for more than a decade, learned about the situation when he sent a grant proposal he was working on for the upcoming 5 February deadline to a colleague. He was told that the White House had just indefinitely suspended all study section meetings and it is unclear what that meant for the forthcoming deadline.
After the initial shock, Hirschey went online to make sense of what was going on. Academic researchers were posting their communications with NIH scientific review officers, who organise and run peer-review meetings. They were also sharing their experiences with NIH study sections – groups of scientists who review grant applications for the agency. Some recounted how their study section meetings were abruptly stopped in the middle of deliberations and others reported upcoming meetings had been cancelled.
Trump signed dozens of executive orders in his first day in office, including a blanket regulatory freeze, and that appears to be the main one that led to the suspension of NIH meetings, according to Hirschey.
Chemistry World contributor Chemjobber, a process chemist based in the US, says whoever in the White House ordered this external communication freeze ‘likely did not know what they were doing, and do not realise the extent to which young academic careers can and will be damaged by a sudden slowdown in the grant funding process’.
A separate directive released earlier this week by Trump’s acting director of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is the NIH’s parent agency, apparently prohibited federal health agencies from releasing any public communication until it had undergone review by a representative of the president. This mandate, which is understood to have prohibited the department from issuing regulations, guidance, press releases and other public communications such as a grant announcements, is meant to end on 1 February.
‘My read of the executive orders align with this idea of looking at study sections as part of this group of things that needs to be re-reviewed in order to look at best practices,’ Hirschey states.
DEI under fire
Some grants funded by the NIH and other federal research agencies include a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) focus or component, which is something that Trump and his allies have loudly and publicly opposed. The administration seems to be conflating it with peer review and federal funding decisions on science, according to Hirschey.
Kyle Grice, a chemist at DePaul University in Chicago, has heard through the grapevine that the Department of Energy has eliminated its Promoting Inclusive & Equitable Research Plan, which requires grant applicants to describe the activities and strategies they will incorporate to promote DEI and accessibility in their research projects.
Grice says his bioinorganic chemistry grant is scheduled to be reviewed in late February. There has been no word yet on whether the meeting is cancelled, but he plans to contact his scientific review officer soon.
The current situation is ‘total chaos’, Grice says. ‘We just don’t know what is going to happen, it is really a painful time right now,’ he adds. ‘It is very uncertain and scary, and this could be beyond the NIH and HHS and affect agencies like the National Science Foundation.’
The University of Pittsburgh’s Jane Liebschutz, whose research focuses on the prevention and treatment of opioid addiction, is concerned as well. ‘This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities,’ she warned on Bluesky.
However, Liebschutz also suggested that when the new NIH director is nominated by Trump and confirmed by Congress he or she will want research at the NIH to continue so its peer review machine will restart. ‘Keep writing papers and preparing proposals,’ she advised. ‘And educate the public about the key role peer review plays in science and the time and infrastructure investment needed.’
Meanwhile, Hirschey says he is now wary about submitting his NIH grant proposal, afraid that it will get caught in a massive backlog. ‘I worry more about the grants I have that are already in the queue to be reviewed in February and March, and if the next rounds of study sections don’t happen then there is no way that those are going to then go to council and to go through the whole process to eventually receive research dollars,’ he tells Chemistry World. ‘And it’s unclear to me how that then gets resolved.’
The prohibition against public communication from the NIH, which appears to include things like emails and official documents, could have serious repercussions. ‘When you receive a notice of award, this is an official communication that is a contract between the government and the institution, and so if no communications are allowed, then all funding dollars are going to stop until that is corrected,’ Hirschey states.
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