Peer review frozen, meetings cancelled: Trump administration leaves its mark on NIH

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 means for the forthcoming deadline.