This is not news to most scientists by now, but others might be interested. Biomedical research is undergoing tremendous damage, even beyond the firings at NIH, CDC, and NSF; the suppression of data sharing; and the attacks on initiatives to improve scientific quality. - ThreadSky

cobey.bsky.social • 4 days ago

This is not news to most scientists by now, but others might be interested.

Biomedical research is undergoing tremendous damage, even beyond the firings at NIH, CDC, and NSF; the suppression of data sharing; and the attacks on initiatives to improve scientific quality.

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cobey.bsky.social•4 days ago

(I first wrote “U.S. biomedical research,” but research is truly a multinational effort.) NIH meetings in which grants get peer reviewed by scientists and in which NIH staff decide what gets funded need to be posted in the Federal Register weeks, and in practice usually a month, in advance.

cobey.bsky.social•4 days ago

The NIH has been forbidden from such public postings for roughly a month now. It looks like study sections are getting cancelled/“postponed”. This is a problem for the public, scientists, and research institutions: It means the pipeline is stopped. Even delays are costly.

cobey.bsky.social•4 days ago

Personal anecdotes: I have a grant application scheduled to be reviewed next week. The meeting is not in the FR, and I am guessing it won’t happen. The proposal is a renewal of a randomized clinical trial to study how annual flu vaccination influences the immune response.

cobey.bsky.social•4 days ago

Some of our extremely generous participants have been completing surveys and contributing specimens for 5 years. We have *really* interesting findings that inspired this proposed study, in which we could dig deeper. The strength of the research/our conclusions depends on there not being gaps.

cobey.bsky.social•4 days ago

I am also serving on a study section that is supposed to meet in early March. There are strict confidentiality requirements that prevent me from talking about the kinds of applications we are reviewing, but I can say that I feel honored to serve in this role.

cobey.bsky.social•4 days ago

Each study section takes about a week of a member’s time. The honorarium comes to less than minimum wage, but most of us do it because we care that good science gets done. The section I am on covers research on pathogen evolution and transmission — important questions on pathogens you’ve heard of.

imagedistillary.com•3 days ago

The study section that I'm on was dissolved. It's been reassembled under one of the institutes instead of CSR. We have the same time line, March meeting but we haven't gotten our assessments yet. This is not good for anyone.

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