NIH Grant Cuts Are Turning Out to Be a Waste of Money - Bloomberg
peter.suber's bookmarks 2025-04-29
Summary:
"The Trump administration’s waves of massive cuts to funding at the National Institutes of Health are framed as a recasting of research priorities and a way to save taxpayer money.
Another way to frame it is an exercise in massive waste.
In terminating nearly 750 NIH grants over the past two months, the government dumped years of investment down the drain. The unceremonious end to those projects means we won’t know the answers to studies that intended to improve the health of Americans....
Funding was pulled just as some of these projects were getting off the ground, while others were rounding into their last year of funding — a point where enough data would finally be collected to offer concrete results. Our analysis found that nearly 40% of the canceled R01 grants supported research that had yet to produce findings, meaning all of the agency’s prior investments won’t benefit the public...."