Latest news with #GrantWatch
Scientific American
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Scientific American
‘Science Fair' of Lost Research Protests Trump Cuts
Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. | A few dozen scientists protested the cancelling of their research grants by the US government at a 'science fair' staged yesterday in Washington D.C. The event, organized by Democrats on a US House of Representatives science committee, is the latest to oppose actions taken by the administration of Republican President Donald Trump to slash US science spending. Researchers presented posters on how their terminated projects might have benefitted society. They were more upset about how the lost funding might affect young scientists than they were about the end of their own projects. 'If you're training right now as an undergraduate or PhD, do you really want to come into a community that has no funding?' Reuben Harris, a biochemist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, told Nature. Since Trump took office in January, the US National Institutes of Health, the world's largest biomedical-science funder, has terminated about 2,900 research grants, according to the database Grant Watch — although about 900 of these might be reinstated after a federal judge ruled that they were cancelled without proper justification. The US National Science Foundation (NSF), another US funding powerhouse, has cancelled more than 1,600 grants. The cuts have targeted research programmes disfavoured by the Trump team, including those investigating the health of gender minorities, the biology underlying COVID-19 and the spread of misinformation. They have also been aimed at some universities, such as Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that the administration says have not shielded their students from antisemitism. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Committee Democrats planned the event, titled 'The Things We'll Never Know: A Science Fair of Canceled Grants,' to highlight the damage of the cuts to the public and to other policymakers. 'What's hard about the politics of fighting for science is that it's hard to tell people what they're missing out on. It's hard to say, 'Hey, this cancer would have been cured before this cut,'' Suhas Subramanyam, a House Democrat from Virginia, told attendees at the fair. 'So this is demonstrating just a small sample of what people are going to be missing through these types of science.' Lost results Many of the scientists presenting at the event were a few years into their projects before their funding was cut — wasting money already spent. Julie Cidell, a geographic information scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, was about halfway through her study on how switching to electric-freight vehicles from diesel ones might benefit local communities when the US Environmental Protection Agency cancelled her grant. 'We especially wanted to gather air-quality data from individuals — have people walk around their neighbourhoods with individual monitors' to track the difference with electric vehicles (EVs), Cidell said. 'That's the part we can't do anymore because we don't have the funding to pay people.' Katie Shilton, an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher at the University of Maryland in College Park, and her team were building moderator tools to flag misinformation on social-networking platforms such as Discord and Nextdoor. She had already spent four years working with online communities to develop the AI tools when the NSF cancelled the grant. 'We built this tool. We started coding it,' Shilton says. 'We had to dismiss our student who was coding the tool right away. Our graduate students lost their summer funding. And we can't finish.' Along with several others at the fair, Jessica Rosenberg, an astrophysicist who studies science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, pointed out the effects of cancelled grants on junior scientists. Rosenberg was in the process of hiring team members to study methods of educating students about quantum technology when the news landed that her NSF money was cut. Three postdoctoral students 'had just finished signing letters turning down their other offers and were supposed to start mid-August' when the funding for the new positions vanished, she told Nature. 'I'm really scared for our students and junior colleagues,' Shilton said. 'I've had a great career even if I don't get any more science funding. But how are my students going to do science?' White House spokesman Kush Desai said of the science fair: 'By slashing waste, fraud and abuse, and realigning research spending, the Trump administration is strengthening America's research apparatus to better deliver on the priorities of the American people — which do not include AI moderators for online forums or more justifications for EV mandates.' Presenters and committee members at the event expressed concern that the halting of so much research could sink US leadership in science. 'We're putting ourselves in the situation of sacrificing our place as the world leader in biotechnology and antiviral-drug development to other countries,' Harris said. Subramanyam said that, perhaps that loss of leadership is the wake-up call the United States needs. If China surpassing the United States 'is the only way to get people here to pay attention, then let China do it,' he said when answering a question from the press about China's investment in space science at the fair. 'Yes, we're going to lose our leadership in science, technology, research and innovation if we continue to make cuts.'
Los Angeles Times
06-07-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
NIH budget cuts threaten the future of biomedical research — and the young scientists behind it
Over the last several months, a deep sense of unease has settled over laboratories across the United States. Researchers at every stage — from graduate students to senior faculty — have been forced to shelve experiments, rework career plans, and quietly warn each other not to count on long-term funding. Some are even considering leaving the country altogether. This growing anxiety stems from an abrupt shift in how research is funded — and who, if anyone, will receive support moving forward. As grants are being frozen or rescinded with little warning and layoffs begin to ripple through institutions, scientists have been left to confront a troubling question: Is it still possible to build a future in U.S. science? On May 2, the White House released its Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request, proposing a nearly $18-billion cut from the National Institutes of Health. This cut, which represents approximately 40% of the NIH's 2025 budget, is set to take effect on Oct. 1 if adopted by Congress. 'This proposal will have long-term and short-term consequences,' said Stephen Jameson, president of the American Assn. of Immunologists. 'Many ongoing research projects will have to stop, clinical trials will have to be halted, and there'll be the knock-on effects on the trainees who are the next generation of leaders in biomedical research. So I think there's going to be varied and potentially catastrophic effects, especially on the next generation of our researchers, which in turn will lead to a loss of the status of the U.S. as a leader in biomedical research.' In the request, the administration justified the move as part of its broader commitment to 'restoring accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH.' It accused the NIH of engaging in 'wasteful spending' and 'risky research,' releasing 'misleading information,' and promoting 'dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.' To track the scope of NIH funding cuts, a group of scientists and data analysts launched Grant Watch, an independent project that monitors grant cancellations at the NIH and the National Science Foundation. This database compiles information from public government records, official databases, and direct submissions from affected researchers, grant administrators, and program directors. As of July 3, Grant Watch reports 4,473 affected NIH grants, totaling more than $10.1 billion in lost or at-risk funding. These include research and training grants, fellowships, infrastructure support, and career development awards — and affect large and small institutions across the country. Research grants were the most heavily affected, accounting for 2,834 of the listed grants, followed by fellowships (473), career development awards (374) and training grants (289). The NIH plays a foundational role in U.S. research. Its grants support the work of more than 300,000 scientists, technicians and research personnel, across some 2,500 institutions and comprising the vast majority of the nation's biomedical research workforce. As an example, one study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that funding from the NIH contributed to research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2016. Jameson emphasized that these kinds of breakthroughs are made possible only by long-term federal investment in fundamental research. 'It's not just scientists sitting in ivory towers,' he said. 'There are enough occasions where [basic research] produces something new and actionable — drugs that will save lives.' That investment pays off in other ways too. In a 2025 analysis, United for Medical Research, a nonprofit coalition of academic research institutions, patient groups and members of the life sciences industry, found that every dollar the NIH spends generates $2.56 in economic activity. Support from the NIH underpins not only research, but also the training pipeline for scientists, physicians and entrepreneurs — the workforce that fuels U.S. leadership in medicine, biotechnology and global health innovation. But continued American preeminence is not a given. Other countries are rapidly expanding their investments in science and research-intensive industries. If current trends continue, the U.S. risks undergoing a severe 'brain drain.' In a March survey conducted by Nature, 75% of U.S. scientists said they were considering looking for jobs abroad, most commonly in Europe and Canada. This exodus would shrink domestic lab rosters, and could erode the collaborative power and downstream innovation that typically follows discovery. 'It's wonderful that scientists share everything as new discoveries come out,' Jameson said. 'But, you tend to work with the people who are nearby. So if there's a major discovery in another country, they will work with their pharmaceutical companies to develop it, not ours.' At UCLA, Dr. Antoni Ribas has already started to see the ripple effects. 'One of my senior scientists was on the job market,' Ribas said. 'She had a couple of offers before the election, and those offers were higher than anything that she's seen since. What's being offered to people looking to start their own laboratories and independent research careers is going down — fast.' In addition, Ribas, who directs the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, says that academia and industry are now closing their door to young talent. 'The cuts in academia will lead to less positions being offered,' Ribas explained. 'Institutions are becoming more reluctant to attract new faculty and provide startup packages.' At the same time, he said, the biotech industry is also struggling. 'Even companies that were doing well are facing difficulties raising enough money to keep going, so we're losing even more potential positions for researchers that are finishing their training.' This comes at a particularly bitter moment. Scientific capabilities are soaring, with new tools allowing researchers to examine single cells in precise detail, probe every gene in the genome, and even trace diseases at the molecular level. 'It's a pity,' Ribas said, 'Because we have made demonstrable progress in treating cancer and other diseases. But now we're seeing this artificial attack being imposed on the whole enterprise.' Without federal support, he warns, the system begins to collapse. 'It's as if you have a football team, but then you don't have a football field. We have the people and the ideas, but without the infrastructure — the labs, the funding, the institutional support — we can't do the research.' For graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in particular, funding uncertainty has placed them in a precarious position. 'I think everyone is in this constant state of uncertainty,' said Julia Falo, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and recording secretary of UAW 4811, the union for workers at the University of California. 'We don't know if our own grants are going to be funded, if our supervisor's grants are going to be funded, or even if there will be faculty jobs in the next two years.' She described colleagues who have had funding delayed or withdrawn without warning, sometimes for containing flagged words like 'diverse' or 'trans-' or even for having any international component. The stakes are especially high for researchers on visas. As Falo points out for those researchers, 'If the grant that is funding your work doesn't exist anymore, you can be issued a layoff. Depending on your visa, you may have only a few months to find a new job — or leave the country.' A graduate student at a California university, who requested anonymity due to the potential impact on their own position — which is funded by an NIH grant— echoed those concerns. 'I think we're all a little on edge. We're all nervous,' they said. 'We have to make sure that we're planning only a year in advance, just so that we can be sure that we're confident of where that funding is going to come from. In case it all of a sudden gets cut.' The student said their decision to pursue research was rooted in a desire to study rare diseases often overlooked by industry. After transitioning from a more clinical setting, they were drawn to academia for its ability to fund smaller, higher-impact projects — the kind that might never turn a profit but could still change lives. They hope to one day become a principal investigator, or PI, and lead their own research lab. Now, that path feels increasingly uncertain. 'If things continue the way that they have been,' they said. 'I'm concerned about getting or continuing to get NIH funding, especially as a new PI.' Still, they are staying committed to academic research. 'If we all shy off and back down, the people who want this defunded win.' Already, researchers, universities and advocacy groups have been pushing back against the proposed budget cut. On campuses across the country, students and researchers have organized rallies, marches and letter-writing campaigns to defend federal research funding. 'Stand Up for Science' protests have occurred nationwide, and unions like UAW 4811 have mobilized across the UC system to pressure lawmakers and demand support for at-risk researchers. Their efforts have helped prevent additional state-level cuts in California: in June, the Legislature rejected Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposed $129.7-million reduction to the UC budget. Earlier this year, a coalition of public health groups, researchers and unions — led by the American Public Health Assn. — sued the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services over the termination of more than a thousand grants. On June 16, U.S. District Judge William Young ruled in their favor, ordering the NIH to reinstate over 900 canceled grants and calling the terminations unlawful and discriminatory. Although the ruling applies only to grants named in the lawsuit, it marks the first major legal setback to the administration's research funding rollback. Though much of the current spotlight (including that lawsuit) has focused on biomedical science, the proposed NIH cuts threaten research far beyond immunology or cancer. Fields ranging from mental health to environmental science stand to lose crucial support. And although some grants may be in the process of reinstatement, the damage already done — paused projects, lost jobs and upended career paths — can't simply be undone with next year's budget. And yet, amid the fear and frustration, there's still resolve. 'I'm floored by the fact that the trainees are still devoted,' Jameson said. 'They still come in and work hard. They're still hopeful about the future.'
Scientific American
03-07-2025
- Health
- Scientific American
U.S. Budget Cuts Are Robbing Early-Career Scientists of Their Future
As a young doctoral researcher at a university in the southern U.S., Camilo felt like he was finally closing in on his dream of becoming a leader in the next generation of HIV scholars. His recent work has helped hundreds of LGBTQ+ Latino people access HIV prevention programs and preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medication that reduces HIV infection risk. But these lifesaving efforts—and Camilo's hopes of a career focused on directly helping people in his community—came to a screeching halt one recent Friday afternoon: he opened an e-mail that said a National Institutes of Health grant, vital to his work, had been terminated. 'I saw an image of a floating pair of scissors clipping my future,' says Camilo, who asked to use a pseudonym, citing fear of retaliation. Since researchers first began receiving grant termination letters in late February, massive chunks of federal funding for science and health have been canceled on a near-weekly basis. The Trump administration has framed these cuts as a way to reduce wasteful spending, refocus research priorities and eliminate ideological bias. Grants have been flagged for containing keywords such as 'women,' 'diverse,' 'minority' and 'racially.' Camilo's research checked all the boxes for the administration's crackdown on so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) research. He had been expecting the bad news, but when it came, it was still crushing. 'You're losing everything,' he says. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Grant Watch, a project tracking Trump's scientific funding cancellations, has tallied more than 2,482 terminated NIH grants worth $8.7 billion and 1,669 terminated National Science Foundation grants worth $1.5 billion as of mid-June. An NSF spokesperson declined an interview request from Scientific American but wrote in an e-mail that 'we remain committed to awarding grants and funding all areas of science and engineering.' The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to direct requests for an interview for this article. An NIH representative did not respond to a list of written questions but said the agency 'is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities.' 'I saw an image of a floating pair of scissors clipping my future.' —Camilo, doctoral researcher On June 16 Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled against cuts to hundreds of grants for projects through the NIH, calling these cuts 'void and illegal' and indicating that funding must be reinstated. Experts expect the Trump administration will appeal the ruling, which does not apply to all of the terminated grants compiled by Grant Watch. Virtually every research sector has been disrupted in some way since Trump took office and issued a slew of executive orders affecting science and health care. Tens of thousands of federal employees at the HHS, NIH and other science- and health-related agencies have been laid off. Universities are bracing for major federal funding cuts by freezing new hiring and cutting graduate student positions. Private research companies and industries have also seen some federal support severed—including support for the development of new vaccines and cancer treatments. 'When you cut fellowships and grants, you're cutting the people that are doing the work.' —Andrew Pekosz, virologist, Johns Hopkins University Of the many thousands of researchers grappling with the fallout, one group is being disproportionately affected: early-career scientists. Senior researchers often have a diversity of funding streams, but for those starting out in the field, 'grants serve as the foundation for an entire career of work,' says Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. With the cuts, 'there are some [early-career researchers] who we will undoubtedly lose from the scientific and health enterprises.' Scientific American posted on a Reddit space for scientists, researchers and lab workers to ask people how they are grappling with the professional and personal whiplash of these interruptions. More than 50 people responded with public comments; dozens more sent private messages expressing fears, frustrations and concerns. We interviewed several of them—and other junior researchers—about how the cuts are affecting their current and future work and what the long-term consequences may be for the U.S. Research Interrupted Students and postdoctoral researchers perform the vast majority of research at academic institutions, so in addition to disrupting individual lives, the cuts have thrown whole laboratories into disarray. 'When you cut fellowships and grants, you're cutting the people that are doing the work,' says Andrew Pekosz, a virologist who leads a lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Pekosz's lab had recently lost a COVID-related grant that was supposed to run until September. which forced him to dismiss a postdoc and a research associate because he lacked funding for their salaries. He was able to cobble together support for a Ph.D. student on the project but had to shorten the timeline for the research. Although the lab's grant is among those that Judge Young ordered the NIH to restore, much damage has already been done. 'There's just an overwhelming sense of insecurity.' —Sierra Wilson, Ph.D. student, University of Pittsburgh Labs that still have funding are also working under high pressure and low morale. 'We're constantly asking our PI [principal investigator], 'Is everything going to be okay? Are we going to be safe?'' says R.K., an undergraduate student at a lab in the Midwest that's investigating treatments for a genetic disease. (R.K. asked to be identified by his initials, citing fear that speaking out could harm his future career.) At weekly meetings, he says, the lab's principal investigator has been pushing the team to publish more papers 'in order to show our progress to donor organizations.' If the researchers' NIH funding shrinks, he says, 'we would need to persuade our other donors for more money to make up the gap.' Applied across thousands of U.S. labs, these losses—both tangible and psychological—will add up, Pekosz says. 'We're going to see a massive downsizing of biomedical research efforts because there simply is not going to be the funding available to maintain the current level,' he says. Recent data suggest this is likely to prove correct. For example, according to a 2023 JAMA Health Forum paper, of the 356 drugs that gained Food and Drug Administration approval between 2010 and 2019, more than 84 percent received research funding from the NIH before approval. This research was powered by early-career workers: billions of dollars in NIH funding supported graduate students, postdocs and research staff who conducted the work. Under the current budget cuts, however, 'all of this is at risk,' says Fred Ledley, a co-author of the 2023 paper and a professor of natural and applied sciences at Bentley University. Deeply Personal The termination letter for Calimo's grant, which is not affected by Judge Young's ruling, said that it 'no longer [effectuated] agency priorities' and that 'research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life or reduce illness.' Not only did these claims completely contradict the original score that NIH grant reviewers gave Camilo's application, reading the letter made him feel like he was being 'attacked,' he says. Early-career grants are both crucial stepping stones to larger grants and recognition of a rising researcher's potential. The way the Trump administration's termination letters are worded 'delegitimates the scientists and the work they do,' Ranney says. 'There's often a deeply personal aspect.' 'I just feel very let down and betrayed by my country.' —Alex, postdoc, University of Colorado Sometimes, that personal aspect is literally about the researchers themselves. Sierra Wilson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh, assumed her liver-regeneration research would be safe from the cuts. But because Wilson is a first-generation college student from a low-income household, her funding came from a program that aimed to increase diversity in biomedical research, and according to the NIH spokesperson, that program is now 'expired.' When Wilson read her termination letter in late April, she suspected it must be related not to her research but to her classification as an underrepresented scholar. In her case, she says, the federal cuts appear to be targeting 'people themselves—which feels more discriminatory.' The NIH spokesperson did not respond to Scientific American's question about the allegation that the termination of grants in the now expired program appeared to be based on researchers' identity or background. According to the spokesperson, 'Grantees may appeal terminations for nonalignment with agency priorities.' Wilson sent an appeal request in May, but she does not expect a timely resolution, and to her knowledge, her grant is not affected by Judge Young's decision. University personnel who helped her with the appeals process told her that they expect she will have graduated by the time the NIH gets back to her. A number of junior researchers say all these blows are taking a heavy toll on their mental health. One of them is Alex, a postdoc at the University of Colorado, whose last name has been withheld for privacy at her request. Alex, who says she comes from a low socioeconomic background and served in the military before pursuing research developing flu vaccines, reports recurring nightmares about losing her postdoctoral job. She 'spirals' each time she sees bad news about science at stake, she says, and has recently developed blood pressure issues. 'I just feel very let down and betrayed by my country,' she says. 'I feel ashamed I even served it.' The Lost Generation of Scientists Scientists who are just entering their field can spark fresh ideas and bring an appetite for change. But dwindling funding and opportunities threaten to 'choke off' this influx of new talent—further constraining the already competitive job market—Pekosz says. He has even seen signs of the scientist-hiring drought spilling over into industry. His graduating Ph.D. students are struggling to secure jobs, he says, adding that his inbox is full of e-mails from prospective students as well as laid-off federal scientists seeking positions in his lab. Wilson has fading hopes for securing a job in academia when she graduates this fall. 'With all these grant and job terminations, the market is flooded, and people aren't hiring because [they don't know] how things will work out,' Wilson says. 'There's just an overwhelming sense of insecurity.' Many scientists, including early-career ones, are contemplating leaving the U.S. to find better support for their research. R.K., who plans to pursue a dual medical degree and Ph.D., is now considering applying to programs in Asia and Europe. Alex, likewise, is strongly thinking about leaving the country. 'I would love to be a PI,' she says. 'But there's no hope left here.' If available scientific talent continues to decline in the U.S., experts anticipate a potential domino effect on the economy. In 2024 every dollar invested in NIH research generated a $2.56 return, so the U.S. economy will likely feel the aftershocks of the recent cuts relatively quickly, Ranney says. In the longer term, scientific discoveries 'will start to stagnate,' she says. 'We need to recognize that we have a tremendous amount of power.' —Tyler Yasaka, medical and Ph.D. student, University of Pittsburgh There's also a likelihood that science fields will become a less appealing choice for incoming college students. 'I worry that we're going to see a loss of basic scientific skill and knowledge as fewer people go into science,' Ranney says. If the pipeline of new talent slows, the nation's position as a global leader in science will be difficult to maintain—or to recover once it's gone, she says. It's going to be impossible to replace all the lost federal funding, Ranney says. The remaining hope, then, is that 'we can reverse course,' she says. Some scientists are uniting and pushing back. Tyler Yasaka, a dual medical and Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh, is part of an informal committee at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Hillman Cancer Center that's brainstorming actions researchers and students can take, such as advocating for science in front of elected officials at Capitol Hill. He is also independently launching a podcast to share scientists' experiences with funding. 'I think most scientists aren't comfortable speaking out publicly, but if we value democracy, we have an obligation to use our voices,' Yasaka says. 'We need to recognize that we have a tremendous amount of power.' Fortunately for Camilo, his university has found institutional funds to support the remainder of his Ph.D. But he no longer sees a clear path forward after graduation to continue his research on HIV and LGBTQ+ health among Latinos in the U.S.—public health issues that are personally important to him. 'It's sad and upsetting,' he says. 'I do not want to give up on my community.'
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Volunteer Track The $10 Billion Blow To American Science
Thousands of research grants issues by the NIH and NSF have been terminated under the Trump ... More administration In early 2025, as reports of mass grant terminations at NIH and NSF rippled across the scientific community, two researchers stepped in to provide what was missing: a comprehensive, verifiable record of what was being lost. Noam Ross, an ecologist and data scientist, began digging through government databases to see whether the terminations could be tracked. Scott Delaney, an epidemiologist and lawyer, opened a public spreadsheet to crowdsource reports from affected scientists. Their efforts soon merged into what is now the most comprehensive public record of science funding terminations in the United States: Grant Watch. Grant Watch is a volunteer-run effort to track the termination of federal research grants, specifically those issued by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since its inception, the project has compiled data on nearly 4,000 grants. According to Grant Watch's most recent weekly report, NIH alone accounts for approximately $3.2 billion in 'lost funding'—defined as funding awarded but not paid out due to terminations. However, Ross estimates that across both NIH and NSF, the total value of terminated grants exceeds $10 billion, including both already-spent funds and future support that will no longer be realized. Roughly half of that amount represents sunk costs for work already begun; the other half consists of future funding that will now never materialize. The economic value of basic research is substantial: federal science funding consistently yields returns that far exceed its costs. In that sense, it is one of the rare public investments that effectively pays for itself. If the current budget proposal is enacted, the estimated $10 billion in terminated grants would translate into significantly greater losses in future productivity, innovation, and economic growth. The scope of the terminations is unprecedented, and that is what prompted Ross, Delaney and their colleagues to start collecting data. 'We sort of stumbled into doing this. Scott and I, and not just us, each started something independently and somewhat joined forces. Suddenly we have a code base and a website, a growing team and a Signal hotline, and now it was cited by a federal judge from the bench.' What began as spreadsheets and amateur sleuthing now underpins lawsuits from organizations like the ACLU, feeds investigative reporting by national news outlets like the Atlantic and the New York Times, and has been cited in federal court filings. The team—which also includes data scientists Anthony Barente and Emma Mairson and a growing team of volunteers—gathers information from public databases, whistleblowers, and grant recipients themselves, who can submit documentation through web forms. They vet each case, verify grant IDs and award data, and attempt to match submissions with official government records. Selected NIH grants identified by Grant Watch as terminated, excerpted from the complaint filed in ... More American Public Health Association et al. v. National Institutes of Health et al., U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Case No. 1:25-cv-10787, filed April 2, 2025). The group operates without institutional funding. 'We are in some conversations with funders to just get enough to bring in someone for a day and a half a week to help with back-end database and website maintenance stuff, so we can focus on more investigations and outreach. But so far no one has paid for anything,' Ross said. Ross, who also works on infectious disease forecasting and serves as executive director of rOpenSci, a project that focuses on improving the R programming language, sees Grant Watch as a kind of data journalism project—one that enables rather than replaces traditional reporting. 'We can't tell all the try to present the information as richly and with as much context as possible so that others can.' That model is working. In just a few months, Grant Watch has become an essential resource for understanding the rapid dismantling of American scientific infrastructure. While official agency reports are often incomplete or internally contradictory, Grant Watch cross-references its data, flags discrepancies, and updates entries as new information becomes available. When asked why anyone should trust the data that Grant Watch is producing, Ross replied: 'My first and favorite reason is that scientists are very quick to tell us if we are wrong about their stuff. We have made mistakes, but we've been told immediately about them every time.' Despite its technical complexity, the project is ultimately motivated by a basic civic concern: transparency. The federal government is not just reducing science budgets; it is actively terminating grants, in some cases midstream, without clear justification or process. The result is not only the loss of valuable research but also a profound disruption to the scientific enterprise itself—students without funding, labs disbanded, data lost. And while the political motivations remain murky, the operational reality is plain to see. As Ross put it: 'We can't tell all the stories. But we can make sure no one can say they didn't know.'
Boston Globe
27-05-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
A Harvard scientist built a database of 2,100 NIH grant terminations. Then his own funding was cut.
Two scientists — Scott Delaney and Noam Ross — took it upon themselves to document the extent of NIH grant terminations. By combining government information with crowdsourced submissions, the pair have gathered what appears to be the most detailed, public accounting of projects halted by the world's largest funder of biomedical research. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'The community of affected scientists is really what drove this. That's really what created it. We wouldn't have been successful if folks weren't willing to step forward,' Delaney said. Most researchers are uncomfortable openly discussing political issues, he added. 'Yet they did, because they shared their information with us. They let us post it publicly online for everybody to see, and many of them even stepped forward and started taking more prominent roles in advocacy, talking to lawmakers, to interest groups, to journalists.' Advertisement The Advertisement Now, Delaney himself has been swept up in the wave of grant cancellations because of the administration's targeting of funding for Harvard University. He is a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and all the grants supporting his research, which examines the ways that climate change can exacerbate Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's, were terminated this month. STAT spoke to Delaney last week about the impetus for Grant Watch, and the escalating battle between the Trump administration and Harvard. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Hearing you say that you study climate change-related health disparities feels like a lot of buzzwords that this current administration doesn't prioritize. When I say it's health disparities and it's climate change, that's jargon. What I'm really talking about is making sure that everybody has an equal opportunity to be well. So that's the health disparities piece. Some groups don't have an equal opportunity, and we can use more jargon, like socially marginalized, this, that, and the other. But the bottom line is not everybody has the same equal opportunity to be healthy because of the communities that they live in or based on where they live, based on laws. I don't think what I do, when I speak plainly, is controversial. I hope this isn't naive, but I don't think that trying to help folks with Alzheimer's be healthier, have better days, should engender controversy. One thing that we can do to ensure that we communicate what motivates us every day better is to stop using these weaponized words that weren't controversial but are now and just have a more kind of simplified conversation about why I get out of bed every day, why I sit down and analyze data every day, and why I write every day, Advertisement When did you have the idea for Grant Watch? At the very beginning of March, there were news stories that I had read that said the federal government was terminating a large number of NIH grants. As I read these stories, my first question was, 'Which grants?' You want to know that, especially because I don't necessarily trust everything the government says. I looked, and there wasn't much information. There were only a couple of folks that had been willing to go on their record and share their story. So there were only, you know, a few examples of grants that I could find. My first thought was, 'This is surely illegal,' but it's going to be really hard to file a lawsuit if we don't have a record of what's happened. We need details. Litigation, especially at the trial court, is fact-intensive. I put my lawyer hat back on, and I thought if there was a way that anybody was going to bring a lawsuit, or if there was a way that anybody was going to sort of organize any other kind of advocacy … we needed a common factual record, and that's why I started it. You mentioned litigation — what do you view as your goal in the next couple of months? Advertisement Right now, our core goal continues to be to curate a record. It's really important to document and establish what happened in the first place. I think that's especially important because the government has taken steps that obscure that record. Through the beginning of April, not so much anymore, the government was putting forth information about which grants it terminated. They stopped doing that. But for five or six weeks, they did do that. The only thing that they've done since then is updated the document … by removing grants that had been reinstated. So if there's a lawsuit, and there's an injunction in a particular lawsuit, and there's a court order that says 'reinstate this grant,' then what the government does is they comply, they reinstate the grant, but they remove it from any federal database and from any other record any indication that it was terminated in the first place. So unless you have our Last week, I assume, this became very personal for you, watching . Can you walk me through what last week was like for you? Last week was surreal for a couple of reasons. Because I've been tracking these grants, I have a front-row seat to everything that the NIH has been doing to science generally. That includes grant terminations. That also includes these grant freezes. So they've said in a couple of instances, we're freezing all the grants to specific universities. What they mean by that is that they stopped paying their bills. They stopped paying out money on grants. So if a scientist spent some money, either on salary or for supplies or for whatever it was, then they would submit that, basically an invoice to the government, usually on a monthly basis, and then the government would pay them. When they freeze payments, they stop those payments. Advertisement The federal government had already frozen payments on all NIH grants, as well as many other types of grants, to Harvard back in April. And the reason that that matters is that the terminations from last week, on some very practical level, didn't have a huge impact. Things were already frozen. It was always going to take a court order or a negotiated settlement, which probably wasn't going to come to undo the freeze. It's still going to take a court order or a negotiated settlement to undo the terminations. All the grants were terminated, but the request from Harvard [to scientists] is to continue doing the research as if the grants were not terminated. That's important, because if you stop doing that research, and then later the court orders the government to start paying its bills again, then you can't collect, right? You can't collect money for work you didn't do. So it's a very long way of underscoring that the practical impact of the terminations was limited, and yet they had a huge impact for a couple of reasons. The terminations felt like a much bigger deal, and a freeze always felt temporary, whereas the terminations felt in some sense final. Even though I know on some cognitive, intellectual level that there wasn't a huge impact, it shook me. I told my colleagues, I was like, I know this doesn't change much, and yet I'm gutted. I just had to take some, take some time away, get outside. On my colleagues, it had a really, really, really profound impact, and was extremely demoralizing. Advertisement But the other thing that it did was it sharpened people's response. During a freeze, it feels a little temporary. We're still kind of moving along as if things are going to be unfrozen, maybe we'll reach a settlement. It didn't have that finality. As a consequence, I don't think people were ready to stand up and fight, not like they are now. These grants are the manifestations of a life's worth of work. You terminate that and now everybody's ready to fight. It takes a minute, right? It takes getting knocked down. You get the wind knocked out of you. But then when you get up, you're ready to go, frankly, in a way that people weren't before.
