GilesH

Article by NEJM editors describing major concerns in the scientific community about the new OMB proposed policies that explicitly puts individual grant funding decisions in the hands of political appointees rather than scientific peer reviewers of scientific officials in the field, and gives political appointees authority to end any ongoing grants at any time without cause by simply stating it “no longer support’s the administration’s policy priorities” nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NE…

President Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is proposing new regulations for how NIH grant funding decisions are made and how grant funds can be used and managed that have the potential for dramatic impact on the biomedical research community. federalregister.gov/document… Someone's summary of key potential implications are as follows: These proposed updates from OMB seek to change the framework from guidance around grants to regulations.  This might not sound significant but has massive implications. OMB also seeks to ensure that it can, on its own, change the regulatory framework regarding federal grants across federal agencies without individual agency involvement.  This would give a lot of authority to OMB.  Also, the change from guidance to regulation would mean that make the changes law, rather than guidance. The proposed rule changes include: 1. Expanded agency discretion in funding decisions, increasing uncertainty in grant awards 2. Change in peer review’s role in the grant award process (Political appointees to review proposals) 3. New restrictions on use of grant funding Limitations on the use of federal funds for publication costs Limitations on the use of federal funds for conference attendance 4. Greater agency authority to suspend and terminate grants on short notice 5. Modified treatment of indirect costs and other allowable expenses, with potential budget impacts 6. The ability to show grant favoritism to institutions with lower indirect cost rates 7. Restrictions on international collaboration and increase oversight requirements for subrecipients 8. Elimination of certain flexible funding mechanism (i.e. fixed-amount awards and subawards), reducing flexibility in how research projects are managed Why This Matters These changes could: 1. Affect how proposals are evaluated and funded Introduce new restrictions on allowable uses of grant funds 2. Result in instability, uncertainty, and an inability to rely on continuation of funding support, given agency ability to terminate 3. Increase administrative burden on investigators and departments 4. Limit collaboration—particularly with international partners 5. Reduce flexibility in managing research budgets and subawards Public comments on the proposed regulations can be made through July 13 from the following link: federalregister.gov/document…

Great progress in cancer 5yr survival rate for many cancers!

Still waiting for the NIH and NSF to start finding grants for this fiscal year — almost no new grants have been funded yet - only continued funding for existing ones.