Ancestors

Written by Geoffrey Adams on 2025-01-23 at 01:16

NIH Study Sections are how the US government recruits expert scientists to help decide what biomedical research to fund.

Normally, Congress and political appointees in Heath & Human Services establish the main funding priorities, and these result in "funding opportunity announcements," inviting researchers to submit project proposals that respond to those priorities. This process constitutes NIH's "extramural" research program, by which academic scientists across the country are recruited to work on NIH's research priorities.

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[#]Science #Medicine #Healthcare #Research #NIH

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Written by Geoffrey Adams on 2025-01-23 at 01:16

The reason for this approach is that while non-scientists in a democracy can and should set the overall goals for spending public money on biomedical research, only expert scientists have the knowledge to formulate projects that can advance those goals. And the diversity of biomedical research problems mean that the necessary expertise can never be completely housed within NIH, so it's better to let experts compete with each other to produce the best proposals for meeting those goals.

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Written by Geoffrey Adams on 2025-01-23 at 01:17

For the same reason, it's impossible for NIH to internally possess all of the expertise to competently review every proposed project. The solution to this is Study Sections. NIH invites scientists (generally people who are themselves funded NIH extramural researchers) to participate in a Study Section, which reviews grant applications responding to a specific funding announcement (NIH-identified research priority). Each reviewer assigns each application a score, and the top-scored applications are then considered for funding.

It is not a perfect system, and I think every NIH-funded researcher has some complaints about how it works. But it's the system we have, and on the whole the past 50+ years of biomedical research in the US show that it basically works pretty well.

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Written by Geoffrey Adams on 2025-01-23 at 01:17

There are currently reports that NIH has just abruptly suspended all study sections, including some that were already in progress, as a result of executive orders prohibiting external communication by NIH employees. I haven't seen definitive confirmation of this yet but it's a weird thing to turn out to just be a rumor.

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Written by Geoffrey Adams on 2025-01-23 at 01:17

Academic scientists structure their lives around the NIH grant cycle. Gaps in funding for graduate students and postdocs can mean that people who we've invested years of public money into training to become biomedical researchers will have to leave the field. Some people may have to close productive labs. Research into life changing treatments and the basic knowledge that will drive the next generation of these treatments will be delayed or halted. Some scientists will likely consider moving their labs to countries with more stable funding environments.

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Written by Geoffrey Adams on 2025-01-23 at 01:17

If you are an American citizen, please pay attention to this news as it develops, and consider contacting your senators and representatives to tell them to put pressure on NIH and the Executive to allow grant reviews to resume. Biomedical research saves and improves lives. We all know people affected by cancer, or Alzheimer's disease, or drug addiction, or long covid. Let's not give up on them, let's not give up on ourselves.

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Written by Cindy Weinstein on 2025-01-23 at 02:38

@biogeo

Excellent thread. This "pause," or whatever exactly it is, will be fatal.

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Written by Mike Taylor 🦕 on 2025-01-23 at 13:09

@CindyWeinstein @biogeo The idea that you can simply pause something like this, then resume it when it suits you, is just incredibly naive.

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Toot

Written by Sasyecat on 2025-01-23 at 17:18

@mike @CindyWeinstein @biogeo

Trump is about to privatize EVERYTHING. The rich will get richer and continue to donate to Republicans who don't care what happens to the rest of us.

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