Sorry for missing last week, I have been severely under the weather with some sort of fever/migraine situation. I don’t want to say it was because I had just watched a double feature of Miracle Mile and Mosquito Coast, but it certainly doesn’t help that we’re now living in Allie Fox’s angry little world.
We are 38 days post signing of the federal budget, but lots of uncertainty remains around federal research funding. There’s also some news out of the Department of Education and National Endowment for the Humanties.
Here we go:
Federal Research Policy
Despite the federal budget being signed in early February, NIH has still not received its appropriated funding. The culprit: The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Previously, after a budget bill was signed, federal agencies were automatically given permission to spend 30 days of their budget while OMB approved their spending plans. If approval took more than 30 days, funding would be released in 30 day increments.
This changed last year. The 30 days of funding now only covers “essential expenses” such as salaries.
There is a few days of lag in public notice but, 38 days later, NIH funding does not appear to have been apportioned.
As expected, Jim O’Neill has been nominated to be the director of the National Science Foundation. O’Neill was formerly deputy secretary at HHS and, until February, the acting director of the CDC.
The NIH will no longer recognize the union for junior for junior researchers at NIH, NIH Fellows United. This development has some potentially dire implications for unionized employees throughout the federal government.
The New York Times has a piece on how a concise ChatGPT prompt was used to decide the face of funded projects at the National Endowment of the Humanities. This report is largely based on information revealed during a lawsuit filed by MLA, AHA, and ACLS. MLA has made some of the testimony public and it is… something.
The NIH is launching a series of “Scientific Freedom Lectures”. Unsurprisingly, it seems to be focused on freedom to express a certain set of views. The first speaker is science journalist Matthew Ridley, a lab-leak proponent and climate change minimizer.
Public Health
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Vinay Prasad, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, will be leaving his position at the end of April.
Higher Education
Seventeen states have filed suit against the Department of Education and White House Office of Budget and Management over the Department of Education’s mandate that institutions of higher education provide disaggregated data on the race, gender, test scores and grade point averages of applicants.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece on the drop in student visas issued before the current academic year. Based on their analysis of Department of State data, the drop is bigger than previously reported. About 17% fewer visas were issued last year.
Cal State has sued the Department of Education of the department’s allegation that San Jose State violated Title IX. Education Secretary Linda McMahon does not appear to be open to negotiation.
Also…
After 35 years in the USA, the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is moving to Europe because they “cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the USA this year.”
Authors note:
Six days of war apparently costs $11 billion.
I’ve seen folks put that up against the annual budget of the National Science Foundation ($8.5 billion), the number of R01 awards, and a few other things. While I appreciate the impulse and share the opinions behind it (war: bad, cutting science funding: also bad), I just can’t get behind putting together an expression that ultimately reduces to the cost of human life.
I have argued elsewhere that science cannot be separated from politics and I stand by that. Let’s examine how the same tools being used by the Administration to choose bombing targets is also cheerfully applied in scientific workflows and at an enterprise level within institutions of higher education. Let’s talk about how scientific racism continues to be a basis for all sorts of odiousness.
Let’s really get into it.
But can we maybe not be so narrowly focused on our grants that that becomes how we relate to everything happening in the world?