NIH hit with freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring

This is surgery with a butter knife. It's going to cause a lot of unnecessary disruption and pain which could have been avoided with a more nuanced approach. What we are seeing with this and some of the new administration's other initiatives, is the abandonment of US soft power in the world.

This is what happens when you let a horse in the hospital. It wrecks stuff

As the token Trump supporter on HN, let me give you what I think's going on. I think they are doing an ideological purge. They want to get rid of anyone promoting transgender science. I think RJK JR. wants to get rid of anyone he thinks is against his MAHA agenda.

They want to get rid of any pandemic scaremongering too. Peter Hoetz said that Bird Flu will start once the trump administration takes office for example.[1]. Hoetz who is a major figure in the vaccine research industry said that "starting January 21st we've got some big stuff coming down the pike starting with H5N1..." and after the Fauci pardon anything is possible.

The bird flu outbreak had been behind a lot of food inflation. I wouldn't put it past people on the radical left who want to hurt the Trump administration to hype the bird flu pandemic to drive up food prices through mass culling of livestock.

[1] https://x.com/TaraBull808/status/1865026704504426860?t=hZnEk...

NIH staff openly conspired against both the public and the President last time Trump was in charge in many different ways. What Fauci and his grantees did wasn't subtle, so the fixes aren't going to be subtle either: the NIH needs either to be abandoned entirely or it needs a massive purge and culture change.

Fundamentally a civilized society cannot tolerate bureaucracies that act like they did during COVID. Fauci is gone now but unfortunately the NIH as an institution is deserving of any and all damage Trump does to them. Frankly if I were in his shoes I'd be going much further than mere freezes.

NIH also played a big role in the creation of biotech industry (funding much of the basic research that set the foundation for amazing medical treatments). I guess we'll have to depend more on the largesse of billionaires.

Remember when Idiocracy was just a movie?

But screw it, they need to get in line with the party.

To be fair to both sides, I hear your right saying hiring has becone political. With DEI pledges for hiring.

Hiring should be merit baed, and not based upon politics either.

would you expect double the nobels if you doubled their available resources?

another loaded question : do you believe the nih is the single government ran example of a perfectly lean and well managed agency without excess expenditure?

> $47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)

$47.4B is a significant amount of money. I don't know whether their expenditures are appropriate. I don't see that in the article either. Unless someone does know that can comment, the $47.4B is unaccounted for in coloquial dialog, is it not?

> The hiring freeze is governmentwide

> pause on communications and travel ... Such pauses are not unprecedented when a new administration comes in.

Hmm, seem like the author is fomenting malice by using ‘devastating’ in the title. Perhaps building a character judgement that might not actually be there, helping to draw anger and hate from people already opposed to the new administration?

> NIH travel chief Glenda Conroy sent an email to senior agency officials early today notifying them of an “immediate and indefinite” suspension of all travel throughout HHS with few exceptions, such as currently traveling employees returning home. Researchers who planned to present their work at meetings must cancel their trips, as must NIH officials promoting agency programs off site or visiting distant branches of the agency. “Future travel requests for any reason are not authorized and should not be approved,” the memo said.

I guess someone needs to ask the question, how exactly is the NIH going to prevent people from "going home"? Does that mean simply that they will not be paying for their travel? Or for that matter, researchers who want to present their work must do it at their own cost or from approved unpaid time off?

I feel like someone is forgetting how hard the MAJORITY of US citizens have it. Inflation has hit non-wealthy people the most. They don't have jobs where they get paid travel or paid time off. While I don't mean to inject some form of class into the discussion, I do wonder what exactly are the things to be fearful of in this scenario. I'm just not seeing a worrying concern here given reality. Unless, there's a more rampant amount of fragility in the well paid health community? I'm sorry. I just don't get it.

None of this is necessary, that's the point.

The government grows like a cancer as it has no mechanism like bankruptcy to remove dead wood.

Agencies start out with a mission, then turn into a business, and finally become a con job. Most agencies are deep into the corrupt territory at this point.

Sounds like it's happening in at least some other parts of the government, too. This order seems to have paused disbursement of even some already-committed funding:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/unle...

"Sec. 7. Terminating the Green New Deal. (a) All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58), including but not limited to funds for electric vehicle charging stations made available through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, and shall review their processes, policies, and programs for issuing grants, loans, contracts, or any other financial disbursements of such appropriated funds for consistency with the law and the policy outlined in section 2 of this order. Within 90 days of the date of this order, all agency heads shall submit a report to the Director of the NEC and Director of OMB that details the findings of this review, including recommendations to enhance their alignment with the policy set forth in section 2. No funds identified in this subsection (a) shall be disbursed by a given agency until the Director of OMB and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy have determined that such disbursements are consistent with any review recommendations they have chosen to adopt."

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>statistics that might be used to argue against Republican talking points are going to disappear

So, you're saying the WHOLE map will be drawn with Sharpie? ;-)

> Also appears to undercut the whole free speech thing that President Trump supposedly supports

Saying he supports "free speech" and actually doing it are two different things. In reality he supports speech that supports his preferred narrative of reality and opposes speech that doesn't.

Free speech, states rights, government accountability, any serious sense of libertarianism and so on are all with the caveat of “if I like it” as far as the current Republican Party is concerned.

If you've worked as a scientist, why not gather evidence before jumping to conclusions? For example, you could inquire of the administration why they did this. They're actually putting in quite an effort at transparency.

if musk et al cannot fill all the positions they have open with people leaving NIH, be sure NASA is certainly next.

FWIW, I was around (i.e. working on NIH funded grants) for the last transition, and I don't remember this happening. I agree and hope that it might not be an ominous sign, but I don't think it's the norm. We're being asked to pull out of not only conferences, but even out of cross-organizational Zoom chats that involve certain institutions. Where I work, the people who've been doing this longer than me are not saying "relax everybody, this is fine," they seem to be freaking out a little bit too.

>But some NIH staff suggested these measures, which include pulling job ads and rescinding offers, are more extreme than any previously.

> halted midstream a training workshop for junior scientists, called off a workshop on adolescent learning minutes before it was to begin, and canceled meetings of two advisory councils. Panels that were scheduled to review grant proposals also received eleventh-hour word that they wouldn’t be meeting.

> “People are just at a loss because they also don’t know what’s coming next. I have never seen this level of confusion and concern in people that are extremely dedicated to their mission,” the scientist says.

>But an immediate, blanket ban on travel is unusual, says one longtime researcher in NIH's intramural program. “I don't think we've ever had this and it's pretty devastating for a postdoc or graduate student” who needs to present their work and network to move ahead in their career, the researcher says.

"Usual" but overly extreme. Seems to fit 2025.

Page 284 of Project 2025:

"The incestuous relationship between the NIH, CDC, and vaccine makers—with all of the conflict of interest it entails—cannot be allowed to continue, and the revolving door between them must be locked. As Severino writes, “Funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid andunaccountable insiders at the NIH, many of whom stay in power for decades. The NIH monopoly on directing research should be broken.” What’s more, NIH has long “been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science.” The next HHS secretary should immediately put an end to the department’s foray into woke transgender activism."

This event is entirely extraordinary and politicized. Nothing will be better "in a week". The actions being taken were telegraphed well ahead of time and were widely known to be part of a strategy to destroy the NIH and replace it with some kind of propaganda arm.