This isn't a coincidence, IMO. The fly community is generally super rigorous - because there are so many tools and techniques available, people expect you to really nail things in order to get published (and keep getting funded)
NIGMS Advisory Council for May 22 has finally posted to the Federal Register. May the odds be ever in your favor, friends.
www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Good morning, friends.
May your coffee be strong and your day productive.
Find something, no matter how small, that you’ll feel proud to accomplish and do it. Then pat yourself on the back. Go you!
How Ironic that on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Woman's portraits have been taken down at NIH and Women is a forbidden word that if found in your NSF grant could get it revoked. #womeninstem
Senator Richard Durbin says he has info from "multiple sources" & meeting notes indicating that Kash Patel has secretly helped direct the FBI purge (via Stephen Miller to Emil Bove), and asked for an IG investigation. Says if true, Patel may have perjured himself. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/u...
Good morning friends.
“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Find your strength and focus. You and your ideas matter and can bring change.
Penn State has halted submission and *acceptance* of NIH grants pending the resolution of the overhead rate cut.
This lost time will never be recovered. The economic cost to Pennsylvania is enormous and the cost to humanity immeasurable.
The Senate HELP Committee has jurisdiction over NIH.
GOP members of the committee represent AK, AL, IN, FL, KS, KY, LA, ME, MO, OH, and SC.
Research universities and hospitals in those states need to be extra loud.
Just got the dreaded email. University of Iowa is halting all NIH grant submissions.
Losing a generation of scientists here will send the state backwards. What a travesty.
BREAKING: 22 states sue NIH over Trump administration's new 15% cap on overhead for federal research grants. Suit filed federal court in Boston contends lifesaving research 'will grind to a halt' under the policy. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Made some slides for scientists to talk about what's been happening & what we should do next. There are probably many people better qualified than me to talk about these issues. If that's you, please, please, please consider holding some virtual advocacy training sessions for researchers this week.
F99/R00 AND K99/R00 DIVERSITY AWARD APPLICANTS
If you have applied for a F99/R00 or K99/R00 Diversity award and the study section for review is not listed on your eRA Commons page, please reach out to me.
DM me, email berg.grants.2029@gmail.com, Signal jeremymberg.78
THANK YOU
Erasure.
At the National Institute of Health, posters of women and scientists of color have been taken down. Shared by @ivancalcantara.bsky.social
Unquestionably, major policy changes, edicts and directives handed down by the new Trump administration will upend lives. But I've also been struck by the widespread efforts to erase/whitewash history. Stick with me for a pretty shocking series of events from just the past few weeks.
Wonderful explainer on indirect costs by Dick Aslin open.substack.com/pub/dickasli...
I have heard from several folks waiting for NOAs that they received something like this message.
There is a current pause on NIH grants, pre & post award actions to allow time to develop a process to ensure that all grant awards are in compliance with the presidential administration’s priorities.
My student's diversity F31 has been pulled from study section even though it's the SAME APPLICATION as regular F31s, normally reviewed together in the same panel. Throwing out all the applications from URMs while the ones from white/privileged students get to be reviewed is blatant discrimination.
The NIH has a predoctoral fellowship called the F31. A subsection (F31 Diversity) is earmarked for diverse candidates, many of whom would have been a shoe-in for regular fellowships. All those applications are being thrown out rather than integrated into the larger pool. Segregation is the point.
Update: They were removed from our reviewer assignments completely. I'm so sorry to all those graduate students. Anonymous to protect the identity of the NIH employee I spoke to...I am on study section next month to discuss F awards. We were just instructed to put the F31-Diversity applications on the bottom of our priority list for review because there is a chance we may not be able to review them. My heart is breaking for the grad students and their mentors that put so much work into these just for them to be disqualified and thrown out.
Just in case you thought that removing DEI criteria would mean that everyone is competing equally: NIH is removing grad students from underrepresented backgrounds from the applicant pool altogether. Their applications will not be considered. Other students, not from these backgrounds, will be.
Hi all, I am in contact with a reporter at Science magazine who would like to talk with a trainee or mentor who successfully applied for an equity/DEI-related NIH training grant or a training supplement but have not received the Notice of Award and probably won't get the grant.
NEW from inside NIH: I am hearing that a “young” DOGE staffer now has access to eRA, the software system used to track/administer all NIH grants.
Censor CDC scientists and ask them to withdraw papers from medical journals?
This is not how it works, Mr President.
Our response @bmj.com on the Trump Executive Order and his "forbidden words"
www.bmj.com/content/388/...
And it begins.
FBI class action lawsuit against the retaliatory purge.
First Amendment
Violation of Due Process
Rights to Privacy
www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/u...
God I love fly gene names! I am reading a set of papers on the piRNA pathway and the array of awesome gene names is stunning
BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed.
Goes beyond MMWR +other CDC pubs. Applies to research already submitted to top medical journals.
Take a look.
open.substack.com/pub/insideme...
Graff, who wrote this, is a former editor of POLITICO.
Sadly, our colleague and friend Scott Hawley passed away this morning. He was an irreplaceable presence and force for good in the meiosis an Drosophila communities and will be sorely missed.
National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills www.statnews.com/2025/01/30/t...
Story by @ericboodman.bsky.social
This account is for sharing info with US scientists, both extramural and intramural to NIH, about attacks on science in the US.
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