Geoffrey Zakarian, one of the Iron Chefs America, was on RFK Jr.’s food show this week. I still don’t know what it is or who it is for, but you can watch it on Youtube (including a segment about the dangers on screen time that you can watch on your phone).
This week’s update includes several NIH updates, a new vaccination-related executive order (sigh), and several new investigations from the Department of Education.
As part of the new NIH Unified Funding Strategy, the agency is requesting comment on a proposal to replace the reporting out of impact scores made during the review process with reporting if a proposal fell into one of three impact categories - “most competitive” (top 25% of impact scores), “competitive” (26-50%), and “not discussed” (scores >50%). The deadline for comments is October 13th.
Various career development (K) award programs will be consolidated after October 12th into a streamlined set of notices organized by program type.
Under the new notices, K awards will no longer have Data Management and Sharing Plan requirements and may no longer be used to support the conduct of a clinical trial. Science has additional coverage.
There is a separate request for information about how NIH can support the development of clinical trial investigators.
The NIH Grants Policy Statement has been updated to include language about how, in cases where the subject of an investigation into professional misconduct is a PD/PI/senior or key personnel on an NIH grant, the agency will decline to transfer funds to their new institution if the case has not been resolved to NIH's satisfaction
Nature has a report on how NIH appears to no longer consider policy-focused projects as within the agency’s portfolio or policymakers as within its relevant stakeholder groups.
The President signed a new executive order this week, addressing the pediatric vaccine schedule. Stat has coverage.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has announced that it has opened investigations into San Jose State University (SJSU) and San Francisco State University (SFSU) amid allegations that the schools permit and perpetuate antisemitic harassment against students on campus.
Yesterday, a federal judge dismissed one the administration’s lawsuits against Harvard University due to insufficient evidence.
Supplemental Reading
What is it, the early 2000’s? Because I’m blogging.
As promised last week, I’ve started a little series where I try to get my head around whats been going on in American science and education over the last two years or so. It started when I was asked to write a two page summary that quickly ballooned into almost ten times that.
Anyway, the (brief) first post is live. Please bear with me as I try to regain my blogging sea legs.