The first part of this past summer, I was preoccupied with preparing three different grant applications. Writing grants is a normal part of my job. Heck, sometimes it feels like it is the majority of my job as an academic scientist. So, those couple of months were not out of the ordinary; I often spend those early summer months preparing for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) summer cycle. While all these applications are now in, my feelings about them and the process in general are very different than ever before. We are in the throes of a period of massive upheaval to American science.

The current administration is clearly hostile to academia. They are attacking universities from multiple different angles. They have bottlenecked NIH, so that much of the money appropriated by Congress to be spent in FY2025 will end up being unused. NIH has been slow to write new grants and slow to even fund remaining years on grants that have already been awarded. They have terminated hundreds of awarded grants on superfluous political grounds (either to attack the diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] boogeyman or to handicap universities that don’t bend a knee to the administration). They have downsized NIH staff so greatly that basic functions are a challenge for both intramural (taking place on the NIH campus) and extramural (performed at universities, institutes, and hospitals throughout the world) research. They have forced institutes to fund multiple years of a grant this year, making it so one grant now accounts for the funds of four grants.

All together, these changes (and others) have led to half as many grants being awarded........

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