NIH moves to decrease administrative burden. Riiiiight.
February 13, 2026
A recent notice (NOT-OD-26-040) informs us that the NIH will no longer require advanced permission from Institutes or Centers for conference grants. For reference to this type of award, if you are not familiar with them, check RePORTER for R13 or U13 mechanisms. Although the NOT reaffirms to us that “NIH’s support of conferences is contingent on the interest and priorities of the individual Institute,Center, or Office (ICO)“, it also claims this is about reducing administrative burden.
As part of ongoing efforts to reduce administrative burden on the applicant community, NIH will remove the prior approval requirement for submission of conference grant applications under the R13 and U13 activity.
This follows a prior NOT (NOT-OD-26-019) that removed the requirement for prior approval of any grants with requests for $500k or more in direct costs. (For some reason the original policy still appears on a NIH online help page.) The new policy says that Letters of Intent will no longer be part of the application process for any purpose, despite re-stating that this was to assist Program with their burden.
NIH has occasionally requested LOIs within Section IV of the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to help Institute, Center, and Office (ICO) staff estimate the potential peer review workload and recruit reviewers.
It then states that
Given NIH’s centralization of peer review processes to improve efficiency and strengthen integrity through the Center for Scientific Review (CSR), the LOI is no longer serving the same purpose to estimate ICO workload. To further increase efficiency and minimize applicant burden, NIH is removing the LOI from the application process.
So this part at least is about minimizing applicant burden. Sounds good, right? Also, the NOT informs us that:
Effective immediately, NIH will no longer require applicants requesting $500,000 or more in direct costs (excluding consortium F&A costs) in any one budget period to contact the funding Institute or Center (IC) before application submission. In line with this change, applicants are no longer required to include a cover letter identifying the Program Official contact which notes that the IC has agreed to accept assignment of the application.
In this case it doesn’t directly reference burden on the applicants.
One thing that is consistent about these moves is that it removes Program staff from a gate-keeping position. Previously, Program Officers could reject requests to approve a conference support application, a big budget R01 or applications for targeted funding opportunities that required a LOI approval.
No doubt some of you, Dear Reader, cheer this change. No longer are you subject to the whims of some Program Officer that hates you or has some buddies they need to take care of first, right? Why should they get to head off your chance to have peer review decide if this is an appropriate expenditure of NIH funds? Why should that long running Gordon Conference that bores you get to keep getting funded while your idea for a new and fresh scientific conference cannot gain support before even being allowed to try?
Why should your R01 proposal be subject to an entirely arbitrary $499,999 direct cost limit, especially when this has not been changed in decades and is something on the order of half of the spending power it was when your more-senior colleagues first got their big R01s funded?
I get it. I get your frustrations. I have had them myself, particularly where it comes to the less formal and workaday interactions where Program staff express themselves less than enthusiastic about my latest ideas, even if they do not have a formal way to gatekeep. As you know, I have occasionally observed that sometimes you have to just submit the grant even if the seemingly relevant Program officer isn’t supportive. I have noted how a good score from a study section has a way of countering programmatic reluctance. Gatekeeping can be a bad thing.
Gatekeeping can, however, also be a good thing.
With this new policy, the devil will most assuredly be in the details.
We are in a time in which it is very clear that NIH funding of science projects will be used, in part, to prosecute a political agenda (e.g., trying to tag Pete Buttegieg with lasting consequences of the Norfolk Southern train derailment). It is clear NIH funding will be used to prosecute the alleged health agendas of political people. There will be an explicit effort to award funds to some projects designed more to prove some theory associated with the regime (e.g., herd immunity, environmental causes of autism, weird ideas on healthy eating) than to illuminate facts. The regime is signalling quite overtly that they plan to award NIH funding preferentially to Red states and institutions that kowtow to their attacks on various things, regardless of peer review merit.
A smart apparatchik might understand that until they replace every serious person from Program, there is a risk that grants to support, say, a conference of anti-vaxxers, or mega R01s designed to prove the Tylenol theory of autism, or the health benefits of the inverted food pyramid would simply be disallowed. They might fear that proposals from traditionally lesser-funded States or institutions might not be automatically accepted if they are deemed lesser in merit or priority.
So one simple solution is to remove the gatekeeper function from the Program staff.
Keep your ears peeled. I bet we are also going to see a sea change in the informal discussions with Program. I bet POs are going to be less assertive about discouraging (certain kinds of) proposals, particularly from specific regions of the country.
Is it an outrage if your NIH grant score goes from nearly funded to ND after you revise it?
February 6, 2026
Yes, the answer is yes.
It is extremely painful to have your grant proposal just miss the cut for funding on one version and then to have the revised version end up way out of the race or Not Discussed. This has come up with regularity in the online discussions of NIH grant review. It starts, at root, with the issuance of grant review comments to the PI in the summary statement along with the opportunity to revise (amend) the grant proposal and re-submit it for another round of review. It is accelerated by the fact that reviewers of a revised version of a grant have access to the summary statement of the prior version.
It just makes sense, to the uninitiated, that in a Just World a grant which is revised in light of prior criticisms of peers should be scored no worse, and probably better, than the original version. Right?
But the answer is also no. No, because the NIH has been trying for my entire time in this business to break peer reviewers of their impulses. To get peers to review revised grants without reference to how the prior version scored in a prior study section.
I started writing NIH grants when the rule was that one could only amend the proposal twice (i.e. to the A2 version), after which it had to be submitted as a “new” proposal. This followed an era in which A6 and A7 amended versions sometimes were funded. It was also during an era in which the impact of the NIH budget doubling was forcing a grant holding pattern. In which seemingly one’s proposal was only going to get taken seriously on the A1 or A2 version. (Oh, and btw, this was an era in which there was no ESI designation or funding policy. No R29 FIRST award set-aside for newbies either. Yeah.)
I lived through the NIH’s decrease of the A2 limit to A1, their attempt to ban resubmitting essentially the same proposal as a “new” grant and the subsequent (and current) backdown. A charitable view might say the NIH was trying to restore a sort of “fish or cut bait” stance of reviewers on original submissions, in an attempt to help speed funding to scientists who had the best ideas. A less charitable view might be that NIH was just trying to juke their stats on time to funding from the original submission of an idea.
I have been trained on many study sections that we are not to somehow benchmark the review of an amended (revised) proposal to the score / percentile / outcome of the review of the prior proposal. We are not supposed to indicate that we had reviewed the prior version of any such proposal. Any hint of benchmarking to a prior score often leads to SRO correction, and possible muttering from other reviewers as well.
When I was first invited to study section, the “Review Criteria Format Sheet” listed a series of headers which started with Significance. The second header was for Response to Previous Review (for revised applications). This resonated with the discussion, to my memory, in which the quality of the response to the review of the prior version was a primary point of comment. Eventually they buried the review template box for commenting on the quality of the resubmission to Additional Review Criteria down below Biohazards.
All of this was required because many of the people who are doing peer review of NIH grants are constitutionally and professionally likely to be instructors and explainers who literally cannot overcome their prepotent desire to help the applicant do better next time. It is why we entered the long path into this business in the first place. It is part of our professional workaday behavior to help people improve their academic work product. In short, it is who we are. Relatedly, NIH started inserting a box for Additional Comments to Applicant way at the bottom of the scoring template under Additional Review Considerations which emphasized reviewers “should not consider them in providing an overall impact/priority score“. This was supposed to be a sort of pressure-relief valve.
We are at another transition point in which the pain for “just-missed” scores and the corresponding outrage over the scores of revised proposals getting worse is ramping up. The 2025 assault on the NIH included a multi-year funding plan, now continued into FY2026 because Congress failed to pare this back in the recent appropriations bill, which inevitably reduces the number of new grants that are funded. This means more “just-missed” applications, particularly from the historical perspective of what scores should have funded. More revised proposals coming back in for review. The CSR is between what is supposed to be only two rounds of review with enhanced triage procedures- about 70% of proposals will not be Discussed compared with the prior 50%. Time will tell if CSR decides to continue this, me I suspect they will. That means not only scores going backwards, but probably many revised proposals that will be ND after being scored the first time.
Cue more outrage.
I don’t know what the best path forward should be. As I repeatedly note, peer reviewers at the NIH are driven first and foremost by a sort of diffuse “fund / don’t fund” binary and a lot of what is said in the summary statement is more a justification of this position than it is a sober quantitative addition of strengths and weaknesses.
I’ve had the pleasure of two low single digit percentile scores in my career. These were on revised proposals, an A2 scored at 2%ile and an A1 at 1.6%ile. The A2 followed a 21%ile A1, back in a time and at an IC where such a score was a strong “maybe” for exception pay. The A1 followed a 19%ile, ditto. I still assert that it would be very hard to show where my 2%ile and 1.6%ile proposals were objectively far superior to the prior versions. These were likely the top scores in the study sections for that round but there is no way in hell these were “perfect” proposals. Nor that they were objectively superior to a whole host of my other grant proposals over the years that got worse scores, from middlin’ within-payline (~8-9%ile at a certain time), to reach/stretch percentiles (hey, I’ve had pickups in those ranges) to NDs. Point being, the excellence of those scores reflects a set of reviewers saying “jeez, fund this thing already” to program and NOT them saying “this is objectively such an exquisitely crafted grant proposal that we cannot help but give it a fine score“.
Friends, we were already down to paylines (and inferred paylines) of 7-10%ile. You can check the funding data for the last few pre-chaos fiscal years for yourself. NCI said theirs was going to drop to the 4%ile range in FY2025 due to the multi-year funding requirement.
We will undoubtedly have an immense traffic holding pattern of previously reviewed grants stacking up.
Study sections simply cannot give them all within-payline scores to reward them for improving upon an already excellent “fund this!” proposal.
Telling Lies to Children: The NIH Chaos Edition
February 4, 2026
Way, way back I was introduced to the communication concept of Lying to Children in the context of the friction between scientists and science journalism. My take on that was related to the recreational use of drugs and messaging about the likely harms of such drugs, where my default stance is on the side of the facts as best we know them.
The idea of Lying to Children actually has its own wikipedia page:
A lie-to-children is a simplified, and often technically incorrect, explanation of technical or complex subjects employed as a teaching method. It is usually not done with an intent to deceive, but instead seek to ‘meet the child/pupil/student where they are’, in order to facilitate initial comprehension, which they build upon over time as the learner’s intellectual capacity expands.
Another way to look at this is to view it in terms of outcome goals. So, in the case of drug misuse disorders, drug dependence, etc there is a public health goal of trying to reduce the demonstrated harms to self, family, community. Does it matter if we subvert the most accurate depiction of the known knowns in service of convincing people not to start using, to use less, to seek help with cessation, etc?
I’ve previously touched on the frightening possibility that perception is everything in changing drug use epidemiology. I say “frightening” because it suggests that the real risks, the subject of my professional life, are somewhat tangential. I touch on our most fundamental lies-to-children in that post as well. Namely that “Drugs are bad”, meaning that if you try recreational drugs, even just a little you are going to be hooked into a spiral of drug dependency and despair. The Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” version of the “truth” about drug use.
I still do not have great answers to that. No matter how much time and effort I spend on trying to determine things related to “the real risks”.
The assault on NIH funded science that is now in a second year has a certain resonance with the Lies-to-Children friction between strict accuracy and outcome goals. Or perhaps it is between the complexity of reality and the outcome goals. I have observed more than once to people that the traditional petty complaints of scientists about one or other aspect of the NIH system have come back to bite us on the ass. Strict accuracy and/or complexity has a way of serving many masters, some of whom are frankly malign.
The IDC / overhead issue had, shall we say, a certain resonance with working academic scientists. People who should know better have contributed a lot of support to the notion that overhead inevitably means “waste”. We seem to have at least temporarily dodged a nasty bullet pointed at these very real costs of doing science, thanks mostly to academic institutions convincing key Republican Congress Critters it would be bad for their districts.
Complaints about supposed power cartels on study sections that hold back true innovators is being deployed at every turn by the representatives of the regime, including the current NIH Director. These sentiments are fueling the appointment of high level IC staff without the input of extramural scientists under the rationale that anyone with credibility in the present system is automatically suspect as a hide bound, anti-innovation, suppressor of new truths. A champion of group think. These sentiments are behind the decimation of NIH ICs’ Advisory Councils and intramural Boards of Scientific Counselors. These sentiments are, presumably, behind recent warnings that serving as an ad hoc reviewer on a study section is a problem for future appointment to a panel for a term of service.
Gripes about supposed ZIP code bias in grant award are traditional, and it is absolutely the case that some areas of the country receive a lot more NIH funding than do others. This reality is fueling both demands for geographical affirmative action from Congress Critters [see ~1:05 of this testimony of NIH Director Bhattacharya before Congress*] and proposals for block grants awarded to States.
The impact of other lies to children about the way NIH has worked are less clear. It is traditional, and has a lot of resonance politically, to wring hands about the future of science. To highlight decreased support for graduate students and postdocs. To insist we are about to lose all new Assistant Professors and therefore we need to double down on ESI support. Will this have positive or negative impact for our goals? Bhattacharya has himself mentioned the plight of younger scientists. It is, of course, unclear which early career scientists he will plan to support- perhaps this is all part and parcel of the agenda to support maverick scientists. AKA, COVID deniers, anti-vaxxers and those keen to “prove” political ideas favored by the current regime such as the causes of autism, the new food pyramid, healthy living instead of medicine, etc.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion are other thorny issues. After all, this is the reddest of red meats for the present regime in their attacks on the NIH; this was Day One business. As you know, Dear Reader, I’ve been comparatively muted on these issues and in particular the Ginther Gap over this past year. Part of this was that there is no sense in trying to make headway on this issue right now, given the stance of the regime. Part of this was that the backlash against tepid, halting, foot-dragging NIH fixes was already happening prior to the election of the current regime. Some of it was that even I have limits to banging my head against a brick wall.
Most of this is that the various lies we tell to children on this issue, including about the NIH’s responses to the Ginther and Hoppe publications, have come around to harm the goal. In some cases, however, I fear that communicating the complicated story isn’t much better. There does not seem to be any level of truth that will not ultimately serve the wrong agenda when it comes to the racial bias in NIH grant funding. Any forthright effort to redress the bias, whereby Black PI’s applications were at a significant disadvantage, was made into grist for the assertion that any Black PI that was funded lacked merit.
This gained support from, you guessed it, voices inside the house. All of NIH’s excuse making was victim blaming. The cherry picking of results to show their glass was half full. The pipeline strategies which said the subjects of the reported bias were the real problem, meritless, and new Black PIs were needed in the um…far off future. The NIH’s protracted refusal to be forthright about how systemic features of review lead to circular, grinding conservatism floated the regime’s agenda. Their refusal to back down from their ridiculous assertions that peer review outcomes reflect Platonic merit with high fidelity (laughably down to the 5-percentile level of resolution) likewise fueled the attack.
In such an environment, is there any point to doubling down on sober factual analysis? Of pointing out that when 20% of a funding disparity is “explained” this leaves 80% of it unexplained? Of showing how many grants with white PIs were funded at percentiles far below that of any funded Black PI application? Is there any point in showing how NIH efforts on DEI fall far, far short of redressing the bias that was reported and replicated?
Is there any point in getting down to brass tacks about outcomes, regardless of any fine talk from Collins or Lauer and regardless of character testimonials from their biggest fans?
The policy currency, in Congress and without, appears to be the simple anecdote. Research trials on cancer patients in which cessation of NIH funding can be trivially tied to at least one patient dying. This is not the time for complicated discussion of whether a causal arrow can be clearly drawn from halted grant funding to one patient outcome, or how long it will take for experimental cancer trials to move toward medical success in a broad population.
The simple version of reality seems to be the strategy. The Lies-to-Children version.
As is the throwing of sure-lose agendas under the bus. For now. Because we pinky swear we will get back to that juuuuust as soon as we turn the corner on the current regime’s chaos. On the real problems. Because we need to move forward. On what is really important.
*Note that the exchange with the Indiana Senator finishes with the assertion that a lack of geographic diversity of NIH grant funding leads to “group think” by Bhattacharya [see 1:07 of the hearing]. Which, of course, the regime finds to be the only aspect of homogeneity of funding that leads to such invariant thinking. Despite the fact that a large number of the scientists currently employed in lesser-funded geographic regions received the bulk of their scientific training in the “group think” geographic regions [hat tip].
NIH eliminates special due dates for HIV/AIDS grant proposals
February 2, 2026
NOT-OD-26-029 informs us that as of May 25, 2026 (applications slated for Council in the January 2027 rounds) there will no longer be non-standard application dates for grant proposals that involve HIV/AIDS research. This has been a constant during my career. As the notice indicates, the special due dates / deadlines were established in 1988 [PDF], i.e., long before I started paying attention to NIH policies.
The HIV/AIDS related proposals were due late in the cycle, i.e., May 7* for Cycle I, Sept 7 for Cycle II and Jan 7** for Cycle III at present. The corresponding dates for new R01s are Feb 5, June 5 and October 5. So you can see how this compresses the review cycle for SROs and sure enough, NIH is begging overwork as the motivator:
HIV/AIDS applications must be identified, segregated and their status validated in manual processes outside of the normal referral stream. In 1988 NIH had to apply these processes in the context of reviewing about 32,000 grant applications. In 2025 NIH will receive over 102,000 applications and managing the additional administrative burden of the non-standard deadlines is no longer practical.
Fair enough, although I’m pretty sure they are giving us all-NIH application numbers and not HIV/AIDS numbers here. I’d have to dig a bit in the databook to figure out the number requiring “manual processes”.
I don’t see any obvious reason to be suspicious of this move in the sense of it diminishing investment in HIV/AIDS related research. We will have to stay tuned to see the degree to which these proposals are reviewed in the same, or similar, study sections as in the past. I’m haven’t paid much attention to these reviews for a long time and I don’t have a good sense of how many are reviewed by IC in-house study sections (now terminated or moved to CSR), by Special Emphasis Panels or by regular old CSR standing sections. This will, of course, be all-critical to PIs who conduct HIV/AIDS related research.
As usual, NIH can’t help including a bit of gaslighting. They say “The advantages of the non-standard dates to AIDS applicants were indistinct“, which is of course ridiculous. For those investigators who pursue both HIV/AIDS and non-HIV/AIDS research having an extra deadline for submitting a proposal facilitates keeping the hopper full. Sure, you can wave your hands about how deadlines aren’t anything special for someone who plans ahead but…come on.
*May 7 would appear to be the final HIV/AIDS deadline.
**Yes, having a due date in early January after the winter holiday season was annoying. Speaking as someone who has submitted at least one HIV/AIDS related NIH grant proposal in the past.
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