\n\tBy SHANNON O. WELLS<\/p>\n
\n\tMany comments from Association of Public Land Grant Universities (APLU)-affiliated schools surrounding the National Institutes of Health\u2019s (NIH) updated strategic plan emphasize common research-field standards such as robust peer review and international engagement.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt feels kind of like a nothingburger, because it\u2019s at the NIH director level (who) by statute of discipline has control of 2% of the budget. Everything else is sitting at the institutes and centers,\u201d noted Mike Holland, Pitt\u2019s vice chancellor for science policy and research strategies. \u201cEach institute center has their own strategic plan, and this is not a substitute for those (which are) disease-specific or whatever the focal point of that institute is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe \u201cnothingburger\u201d becomes more substantive, however, when it comes to federal funding and the Trump administration\u2019s interest in seeing NIH money spread \u201cmore evenly\u201d across the country.<\/p>\n
\n\tHolland shared such insights during an update on the NIH strategic plan at the May 15 Senate Research Committee meeting.<\/p>\n
\n\tAlthough cuts are not surprising, Holland said concern is high about the administration\u2019s fiscal year 2027 request for 40% to 70% cuts to research agencies. The first major markup is for the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS) appropriations subcommittee<\/a>, which dictates funding for agencies like National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).<\/p>\n \n\tHolland described receiving a \u201csort-of panicked\u201d email from certain departments noting that the House of Representatives mark for NSF is down approximately 12%. \u201cThey were like, \u2018That\u2019s terrible.\u2019 And it is, but it\u2019s setting up negotiation with the Senate, which will mark up later.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn other words, it\u2019s not quite as bad as it initially seems.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI noted that, \u2018Yes, it looks bad,\u2019 but relative to the House mark out of CJS last cycle, on FY 26, where the administration proposed \u2026 more than a 50% cut. CJS markup was a minus 22%,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve gotten the House to go from minus 22 to minus 11. That\u2019s progress.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tProperly interpreting budget requests and appropriations markups requires looking \u201cat the deltas relative to the prior deltas, which makes it a little bit of a pain \u2026 to interpret, but that\u2019s kind of how you have to do it,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo, while it does look bad \u2026 it\u2019s less bad than it was last go-round, which probably bodes well for us in the final shakeout. So, that\u2019s that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLabor and Health and Human Services (HHS), a more \u201ccomplicated bill\u201d that includes NIH funding, has yet to be marked up, he noted. \u201cSo, we\u2019ll find out later. Because of the labor part and the other parts of health and human services … it tends to come later in the queue.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tResponding to a question about the diminished influence of the NIH director in the process, Holland said the Trump administration is \u201ckind of throwing lots of rules out the window, but isn\u2019t really respecting norms or traditions, and then also not necessarily really respecting the letter of the law, so that\u2019s a lot more fluid,\u201d he explained. \u201cThe prior process was when you had permanent institute\/center directors in place. They were much more comfortable with pushback.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWith this administration, as several seats of centers and institutes remain open, interim leadership is common.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt is, in this environment, squishier, but the formality of that strategic plan is technically only that very thin layer that\u2019s cutting across everything,\u201d he noted. \u201cThat\u2019s a little difference between the formality of the strategic plan thing and how things are actually working in practice these days. There is a little bit of a disconnect.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHolland said while he recalls seeing an email encouraging people to apply, federal jobs have become \u201cfar less attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cBefore, those were very attractive jobs, and now with a secretary you might not agree with, the director you might not agree with and an administration feeling super comfortable to reach in and get in your shorts and not have the autonomy that your predecessors would have had traditionally, they have become far less attractive jobs,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how that recruiting process is going, but there was an effort through the APLU and some of the other professional societies to sort of encourage people to apply.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAddressing a question about NIH grant disbursement being \u201cvery slow this year,\u201d Holland clarified that Pitt research is \u201cfully committed to spending all the money that has been appropriated to us by the end of the fiscal year. \u2026 They just haven\u2019t been doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPart of the slowdown in CJS agencies, including NASA and NSF, is because the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is \u201cvery aggressively\u201d using its apportionment tools to slow spending, he added.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey were doing that similarly with NIH out of the Labor HHS account, so that explains part of the slowdown. \u2026 Purportedly those spending plans have been approved by the appropriators, so now they can start again. But they haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt hasn\u2019t really started money moving as much,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not entirely sure why, but what they\u2019re saying is, they\u2019re going to spend. Probably it\u2019ll be the same kind of behavior as last cycle, which is not in any way, shape or form comforting. I don\u2019t know what else to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMelanie Scott, associate professor of surgery in the School of Medicine, said she\u2019s heard that NIH attributes the slowdown to the earlier government shutdown and subsequent employee layoffs.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cA lot of people were laid off and they haven\u2019t been taken back on again, so they\u2019re operating at a deficit from that point of view,\u201d she noted. \u201cAlso \u2026 the number of grants is down, and in part because they\u2019re going along with a lot of this multi-year funding \u2026 for the whole period. \u2026 They can\u2019t fund the number of grants that they were funding over the same fiscal year, because it\u2019s the same amount, as it were, but it\u2019s not the same number of grants, which is concerning.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt disproportionately affects early-career investigators, in particular, and it\u2019s not necessarily a good practice,\u201d Scott added, noting the \u201cpros and cons\u201d of multi-year funding. \u201cIt\u2019s the problem of how they implement it, and they\u2019ve decided to just sort of do it, and that\u2019s obviously bad \u2026 because you get this backlog and you get a decreased number of actual grants funded, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n \tPeer reviewer restrictions<\/p>\n \n\tAlthough Pitt doesn\u2019t receive a lot of Department of Energy (DOE) money, Holland shared the encouraging news that a network recently formed to support awardees who were affected by the $1.7 billion DOE awards terminated in the energy technology space.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cDOE on the energy technology side seems to be spending again in a way that they had not been spending for months,\u201d he noted. \u201cI don\u2019t know if that\u2019s a sign that something has unlocked, and now we might expect to see some more, but honestly, that\u2019s one of the first positive things I\u2019ve heard.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201c(Pitt doesn\u2019t have) a lot of DOE money, but at least in that space there seems to be a positive sign,\u201d he added. \u201cBut again, don\u2019t over interpret.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn the wake of the recent termination of the NSF\u2019s entire governing board<\/a>, Holland shared that Rebecca Keiser, NSF acting chief of staff and chief of research security strategy and policy, told him that NSF appointments from President Trump\u2019s first term are ending.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cBecause they went through (President) Biden, and now it\u2019s the second Trump administration, all of their appointments ended, which left (NSF) comprised solely of Biden administration appointees,\u201d Holland said. \u201cAnd through probably just a lack of interest of actually having any input, (they thought) \u2018Because we kind of don\u2019t get what they say anyway, and it\u2019s just Biden folks, we\u2019ll just like chuck them all out, dissolve it, instead of do anything to put new people in there\u2019 and \u2018Well, they\u2019re all Biden\u2019s people. We don\u2019t care what they say anyway.\u2019 So that\u2019s kind of why that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn more somber research news, Melanie Scott noted that NIH stopped its continuous submission for peer reviewers.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis was the one sort of remaining perk that you might possibly have as a peer reviewer, if you\u2019re a permanent member on a study section,\u201d she noted. \u201cBecause you spend all your time reviewing other people\u2019s grants, that can sometimes mean that your grants take a little longer to get together, so you were allowed that extra time.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou could submit, I think it was like two weeks before the council met, or something like that. \u2026 NIH have stopped that now, after this next peer review group.<\/p>\n \n\tScott called the change \u201canother sort of nail in the coffin of peer reviewers.\u201d Scientists, she explained, now have \u201cvery little incentive to really get involved with this. \u2026 Your peer review isn\u2019t also taken as seriously as it used to be, with the continuation of the new competitive-discussed\/competitive-not-discussed criteria, which mean that half the ones that you don\u2019t discuss actually could be funded based on who-knows-what criteria, certainly not necessarily on scientific quality basis.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s just another reason to wonder what\u2019s going on at NIH about peer review and what they are actually wanting to fund or not fund,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \n\tShannon Wells is a University Times reporter. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHave a story idea or news to share? Share<\/a> it with the University Times.<\/p>\n