petersuberUpdate. The Dept of Health and Human Services (#HHS) can no longer fulfill requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act (#FOIA), at least not without "exponentially" longer delays and backlogs. #RFKjr — who promised "radical transparency" — fired the staffers who handled those requests. A spokesperson said the layoffs will "streamline" the department and the work "will continue".
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/03/g-s1-57888/hhs-fda-rfk-foia-public-records
Update. #DOGE will review #NIH grant opportunities "to ensure the research that will be funded aligns with the priorities of President Donald Trump’s administration."
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-officials-will-screen-nih-funding-opportunities
(#paywalled)
PS: Note that this is about content, politics, or ideology, not waste, fraud, or abuse.
"One NIH employee familiar with the matter worries that Trump officials reviewing the NOFOs [Notices of Funding Opportunities] “may not have the scientific background to understand why funding for research on certain topics is important.” Moreover, they added, “Having these decisions made by DOGE after months have been spent writing the NOFOs drafts and getting buy-in from [NIH’s institutes and centers] and offices is a huge waste of staff time and resources.”
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Scientists sue #NIH, saying politics cut their research funding"
https://apnews.com/article/nih-funding-trump-dei-research-094ed2abe5ba529cdb74f7e0b429c4f3
"A group of scientists and health groups sued the NIH on Wednesday, arguing that an “ideological purge” of research funding is illegal and threatens medical cures…The suit was filed by the American Public Health Association [#APHA], unions representing scientists and some researchers who were stripped of grants."
A similar suit has been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (#ACLU), the Center for Science in the Public Interest (#CSPI), and the Protect Democracy Project (#PDP).
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/aclu-sues-national-institutes-health-ideological-purge-research-projec-rcna199360
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics
Scientists sue NIH, saying politics cut their research funding
A group of scientists and health groups sued the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday, arguing that an “ideological purge” of research funding is illegal and threatens medical cures. Hundreds of NIH research grants have been abruptly canceled for science that mentions the words diversity, gender and vaccine hesitancy, as well as other politically charged topics. The lawsuit argues that has led to grants being cut that fund studies of HIV prevention, violence prevention in children, pregnancy health disparities and Alzheimer’s disease, among others. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Massachusetts.
Update. "Leaked Memo Reveals Insane Ban on Words Agriculture Department Can Say"
https://newrepublic.com/post/193395/agriculture-department-ban-words-safe-drinking-water
"A leaked memo from the U.S. Department of #Agriculture’s Research Service division revealed Sunday that the agency has banned some key language from its vocabulary, including the words “climate” and “vulnerable,” as well as the phrase “safe drinking water.” Other baffling entries on the memo’s banned language list are “greenhouse gas emissions,” “methane emissions,” “sustainable construction,” “solar energy,” and “geothermal,” as well as “nuclear energy,” “diesel,” “affordable housing,” “prefabricated housing,” “runoff,” “microplastics,” “water pollution,” “soil pollution,” “groundwater pollution,” “sediment remediation,” “water collection,” “water treatment,” “rural water,” and “clean water,” among dozens of others."
Update. "As #Universities Yield to #Trump, Higher Ed #Unions Are Fighting"
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/labor-unionization/2025/04/04/universities-yield-trump-higher-ed-unions-fight
"Many college and university presidents have kept silent. But unions representing higher ed employees have stepped up to the plate. They’ve protested in Washington, D.C., and on their campuses, organized open letters and filed a flurry of lawsuits against the Trump administration. Union leaders say they are filling a void in an existential fight for higher ed’s future. They wish others would join their resistance, but their unified strength in numbers may protect their members from federal retaliation in ways that higher ed officials aren’t."
Update. "US Weather Agency to Preserve Research Websites in Reversal"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-04/us-weather-agency-to-preserve-research-websites-in-reversal
"The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency [#NOAA] will preserve access to websites tied to its research division, after previously moving to cancel a cloud web services contract that supports many of its pages. Bloomberg News had reported earlier that the service contract for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — known as NOAA Research — had been set to terminate this week, jeopardizing access to most of the office’s public-facing websites. But in an emailed statement Friday, NOAA said that the sites will be preserved."
#Censorship #Climate #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost Forever"
https://www.404media.co/nih-archives-repositories-marked-for-review-for-potential-modification
(#paywalled)
"Almost two dozen repositories of research and public #health #data supported by the #NIH are marked for “review” under the #Trump administration’s direction, and researchers and archivists say the data is at risk of being lost forever if the repositories go down. “The problem with archiving this data is that we can’t,” Lisa Chinn, Head of Research Data Services at the University of Chicago…Unlike other government datasets or web pages, downloading or otherwise archiving NIH data often requires a Data Use Agreement between a researcher institution and the agency, and those agreements are carefully administered through a disclosure risk review process."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "The White House Frames the Past by Erasing Parts of It"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/technology/trump-history-websites.html
"Thousands of…govt web pages [have] been taken down or modified, including content about vaccines, hate crimes, low-income children, opioid addiction and veterans, before a court order temporarily blocked part of the sweeping erasure. A Justice Department database tracking criminal charges and convictions linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was removed. Segments of data sets are gone, some of the experts who produced them were dismissed, and many mentions of words like “Black,” “women” and “discrimination” have evaporated…“This is not a cost-cutting mechanism,” said Kenny Evans, who studies science and technology policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and runs the White House Scientists Archive at the school. 'This slide toward secrecy and lack of transparency is an erosion of democratic norms.'"
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Marks Says He Was Forced Out of #FDA for Trying to Protect #Vaccine Safety #Data"
https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/fdageneral/114998
"Shortly before he was forced to resign, the nation's top vaccine regulator says he refused to grant #HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s team unrestricted access to a tightly held vaccine safety database, fearing that the information might be manipulated or even deleted."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. Statement from the University of California Systemwide Academic Senate Council: The Defense of the University, April 8, 2025
https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/academic-council-statement-defense-of-university-april-2025.pdf
"We thus call on the Regents, President, and Chancellors of the University of California to expend every effort, commit necessary resources, and use all legal measures to defend our ability to conduct consequential, transformative research and provide high-quality teaching and mentoring. We call on our leaders to ensure the safety and privacy of students, faculty, and staff. And we further call on our leaders to protect academic freedom and faculty control of the curriculum—proactively and publicly."
Update. "Mississippi libraries ordered to delete academic research in response to state laws"
https://mississippitoday.org/2025/04/08/mississippi-libraries-ordered-to-delete-academic-research-in-response-to-state-laws/
"A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by #Mississippi #libraries and public #schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries. The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law…One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. A statement from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (@americanacad).
https://www.amacad.org/news/board-statement-values-april-2025
"Our founders were also the founders of our nation…Current developments, in their pace, scale, and hostility toward institutions dedicated to knowledge and the pursuit of truth, have little precedent in our modern history. We oppose reckless funding cuts and restrictions that imperil the research enterprise of our universities, hospitals, and laboratories…We condemn efforts to censor our scholarly and cultural institutions, to curtail freedom of the press, and to purge inquiry or ideas that challenge prevailing policies…The Academy will continue to…work to safeguard the conditions of freedom necessary for novel discoveries, creative expression, and truth-seeking in all its forms. We join a rising chorus of organizations and individuals determined to…prevent our nation from sliding toward autocracy."
Update. "Estimated economic losses from federal health research cuts, by county"
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/09/nih-cuts-nationwide-impact-county-map
"Nearly half of all U.S. counties will experience economic losses of at least $250,000 as a result of the Trump administration's planned cuts to indirect funding by the National Institutes of Health [#NIH], per the Science & Community Impacts Mapping Project."
#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "NIH freezes all research grants to Columbia University"
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-all-research-grants-columbia-university
"Weeks after President Donald Trump’s administration ordered the U.S. National Institutes of Health to pull $250 million in biomedical research grants to #ColumbiaUniversity, the agency is freezing all remaining grant money owed to the university until further notice…#NIH will not only block new funding for the university, but also stop paying investigators working on all existing NIH projects."
#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Update. "White House ends funding for key US climate body"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/trump-national-climate-assessment-usgcrf
"The White House is ending funding for the body that produces the federal government’s pre-eminent climate report, which summarizes the impacts of rising global temperatures on the United States. Every four years, the US Global Change Research Program (#USGCRP) is required by Congress to release a new national climate assessment to ensure leaders understand the drivers of – and threats posed by – global warming. It is the most comprehensive, far-reaching and up-to-date analysis of the climate crisis, playing a key role in local and national decision making about agriculture, energy production, and land and water use…But now, #NASA has ended its contract with the consulting firm ICF International, which convened the USGCRP and coordinated the federal agencies that contribute to the quadrennial report."
Update. "US #NIH reverses conference travel ban for scientists"
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-nih-scientists-barred-attending-conferences-their-own-time-dime-2025-04-10/
"Researchers at the US National Institutes of Health had been told they cannot attend scientific conferences and meetings without official permission, even if they paid their own way and went during time off… After Reuters reported the travel restriction policy earlier on Thursday, an #HHS spokesperson said, 'Effective April 10, official travel may resume following established approval processes within each Institute and Center.'"
Neither the original travel restrictions nor the recent reversal have been put in writing.
Update. Phillip Levine lists the 77 US #universities that stand to lose the most from three kinds of funding cuts threatened by the #Trump admin: (1) capping indirect costs for #NIH grants at 15%, (2) cutting the #NSF budget by two-thirds, and (3) endowment taxes.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/these-77-colleges-have-the-most-to-lose-from-trumps-cuts
(#paywalled)
PS: Note that there are other kinds of cuts that Levine does not bring into this calculation, like withholding funds from targeted institutions because of their DEI or antisemitism policies.
#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Update. "More Than $110 Million in #NIH Grants to #Harvard, Affiliated Hospitals Terminated Since Late February"
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/11/funding-canceled-nih-trump/
"All of the grants were terminated before the #Trump administration announced a $9 billion review of funding to Harvard and affiliated health care centers. At least four grants to Harvard-affiliated scholars — specifically those related to research on Covid-19 — have since been temporarily reinstated as the White House battles court challenges. The affected projects had more than $43 million in undisbursed funds at the time of cancellation…All of the canceled projects prominently featured themes of #gender and #sexualidentity, #Covid-19 and its #vaccine, or health disparities."
#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
More Than $110 Million in NIH Grants to Harvard, Affiliated Hospitals Terminated Since Late February | News | The Harvard Crimson
The National Institutes of Health has terminated research grants worth more than $110 million to Harvard University and its affiliated hospitals since late February, according to public Department of Health and Human Services filings reviewed by The Crimson.
Update. "Judge permanently blocks #NIH’s plan to cap funding, setting up appeals battle"
https://www.highereddive.com/news/judge-permanently-blocks-nihs-plan-to-cap-funding-setting-up-appeals-batt/744647/
"Research #universities won an extended reprieve Friday when a federal judge permanently barred the National Institutes of Health from capping funding for indirect research costs at a 15% rate, a move that would cost institutions billions a year. US District Judge Angel Kelley ruled NIH had violated federal statute, was “arbitrary and capricious” in creating the cap, failed to follow rulemaking procedures when doing so and violated constitutional prohibitions on applying new rules retroactively."
The NIH will surely appeal.
#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Update. "Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency. White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted."
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-seeks-end-climate-research-premier-u-s-climate-agency
(#paywalled)
"President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the #climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (#NOAA)…The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to #NASA’s science programs."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Massive cuts to #NASA science proposed in early White House budget plan"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/04/11/nasa-science-budget-cuts-trump/
"NASA’s science budget could be cut nearly in half under an early version of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal to Congress, a move that would terminate billions of dollars’ worth of ongoing and future missions…'This is an extinction-level event for NASA science,' said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Planetary Society…'It needlessly terminates functional, productive science missions and cancels new missions currently being built, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars in the process.'”
Update. "#CDC's #STD Lab Shuttered by #Trump Layoffs"
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/stds/115065
"A critical laboratory for surveilling sexually transmitted diseases (#STDs) in the US has been lost in the Trump administration's mass layoffs…One of its most remarkable projects is a one-of-its-kind repository of 50,000 isolates of gonorrhea used to monitor antibiotic resistance, which is quickly becoming a global health concern. The lab has been doing this work for nearly 40 years -- but will now, at best, have a gap in data."
Also see the public statement by the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association (#ASTDA).
https://www.astda.org/statement-from-astda-on-cuts-to-the-cdcs-division-of-std-prevention/
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #OpenData #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
The Food and Drug Administration (#FDA) has already lost 19% of its staff, the Centers for Disease Control (#CDC) 18%, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (#CMS) 9%.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/115145
Update. "The National Science Foundation (#NSF) has abolished its chief mechanism for getting the scientific community’s input on its programs."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-scraps-most-outside-advisory-panels
(#paywalled)
Update. "Faculty Letter to #Yale University Administration"
https://sites.google.com/view/yalefacultyletter2025/home
"We stand together at a crossroads. American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now. We urge you to: …Resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance…Protect science and other research at Yale from funding cutoffs… Defend the rights to free speech on campus…Work purposefully and proactively with other colleges and universities in collective defense."
#Academia #AcademicFreedom #DefendResearch #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Yale Faculty Letter
April 2025 Dear President McInnis, Provost Strobel, and Members of the Yale Board of Trustees: We stand together at a crossroads. American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association,
Update. "The #Trump administration’s cuts have slowed operations in #Antarctica to a crawl. Scientists warn that #climate research conducted there is vitally urgent. Despite this, the #NSF is preparing for an operational retreat from Antarctica."
https://explorersweb.com/new-funding-cuts-forcing-u-s-researchers-out-of-antarctica/
PS: This one is more personal for me. In 1996 I visited Palmer Station, an NSF-funded base for polar biology on Anvers Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, and had a wonderful talk and tour with its director, Polly Penhale.
Update. "Faculty From 14 Universities Join Forces to Call on Administrative Bodies to Stand Up to Attacks on Higher Education"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hFz55-UB17Q4dQpC-Zz6YNBaYWfQF87ilfiK5avWXEQ/edit?tab=t.0
"Faculty from fourteen universities across the United States signed and released letters calling for their respective university’s administrative bodies to stand up to the Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedom, freedom of inquiry, and other democratic principles. Nearly 5,100 faculty have collectively signed these letters on what the American Association of University Professors has called a Day of Action for Higher Ed. This is a collaborative effort independently organized by passionate faculty across four universities… Following the extraordinary sign of leadership from Harvard University on April 14, 2025, these faculty are speaking out to encourage their own institutions to stand up and fight back collectively against the illegal and unprecedented actions of the federal government."
#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #Trump #Universities #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Press Release - A Day of Action for HigherEd
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Faculty From 14 Universities Join Forces to Call on Administrative Bodies to Stand Up to Attacks on Higher Education Nearly 5,100 Faculty From 14 Universities Call on University Administrations to Stand Up to Attacks on Democratic Principles Cambridge, MA - April 17th, 2...
Update. Bad news from the #NEH for #KnowledgeCommons (and the rest of us).
https://about.hcommons.org/2025/04/17/on-the-neh-and-our-path-forward/
"On April 2, 2025, we received notification that our NEH Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant, awarded in 2020, was terminated effective immediately…On April 10, 2025, we received further…notification that our contract to provide the NEH’s Designated Public-Access #Repository was also being terminated…This loss is devastating…both for the financial impact it represents…but also for the unceremonious end to a goal we’d set for ourselves years ago…Not to mention the bigger picture here: that designated public-access repository is no longer needed, because it is assumed that the NEH will no longer be funding research, and thus there will be no results of research to make publicly accessible."
PS: All the agencies covered by the #OSTP #NelsonMemo must designate #OpenAccess repositories for their OA content. NEH was the only agency to designate a repo not hosted by the govt. All the other agency repos will be hosted by the govt, where they will be subject to political censorship or takedowns.
#Censorship #DefendResearch #GreenOA #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More"
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-data-collection-hhs-epa-cdc-maternal-mortality
"The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and it’s unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples."
PS: What follows is one of the best lists of deleted or endangered datasets so far published.
#Censorship #DefendResearch #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More
By slashing teams that gather critical data, the administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose consequences could ripple out for decades.
Update. "Trump team freezes new NSF awards — and could soon axe hundreds of grants"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01263-0
"All new research grants have been frozen at the US National Science Foundation (#NSF) — an action apparently ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency (#DOGE)… Documents seen by Nature show that two members of DOGE…have been given access to grant management systems and used that access to prevent grants from receiving funding that were already approved but awaiting finalization. 'That, of course, raises the hairs on the back of our neck in a worrisome way,' an NSF programme officer says."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "U.S. climate data websites go dark"
https://www.science.org/content/article/us-climate-data-websites-go-dark
"U.S. scientists, state policymakers, farmers, and others who depend on up-to-date #climate data on Thursday confronted an information blackout from federal regional climate centers across much of the country. “Unfortunately, all data and services offered under the base contract, including this website, will be unavailable unless and until funding is resumed,” a statement on the Southern Regional Climate Center’s website read…The disruption appears to be a temporary paperwork bottleneck within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (#NOAA), rather than a policy decision by agency leadership, officials at several of the centers say. The centers are managed by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. But they are housed chiefly at #universities operating under 5-year agreements. The contracts for payment are approved each year. The last annual cycle ended on 16 April."
#Climate #DefendResearch #Funding #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Trump’s #DOJ Sends Intimidating Letters to Medical #Journals for Supposedly Being ‘Partisan’ "
https://gizmodo.com/trumps-doj-sends-intimidating-letters-to-medical-journals-for-supposedly-being-partisan-2000591550
"The U.S. Department of Justice has sent letters to medical journals for supposedly being “partisan,” heavily suggesting that they’re spreading misinformation and are influenced by “funders” rather than medical science. Gizmodo has confirmed that the journal CHEST, a peer-reviewed publication on pulmonary care published by the American College of Chest Physicians, received a letter this week. And MedPage Today reports that at least two other journals have received similar intimidating letters."
PS: The letter to Harvard shows that the Trump admin wants to control what universities teach. These letters show that it also wants to control what scholarly journals publish.
#AcademicFreedom #Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "#NIH freezes funds to #Harvard and four other universities, but can’t tell them."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-funds-harvard-and-four-other-universities-can-t-tell-them
(#paywalled)
"After freezing all grants to #Columbia University last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now stopping grant and contract payments to Harvard University and four other universities [#Brown, #Northwestern, #Cornell, #WeillCornell Medical School]…The move will both block new funding and halt payments to investigators currently working on NIH projects…The Department of Health and Human Services (#HHS)…instructed NIH staff not to provide any communication to these institutions or to Columbia about whether the funds are frozen or why, according to the email."
#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Update. "Over 150 US university presidents sign letter decrying #Trump administration"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/21/us-university-presidents-trump-administration
"More than 150 presidents of US colleges and universities have signed a statement denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with higher education – the strongest sign yet that US educational institutions are forming a unified front against the government’s extraordinary attack on their independence. The statement, published early on Tuesday by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, comes weeks into the administration’s mounting campaign against higher education, and hours after Harvard University became the first school to sue the government over threats to its funding."
The letter itself:
https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-call-for-constructive-engagement
EDIT. As of April 24, 2025, the tally of signatures is up to 425.
EDIT. As of August 1, 2025, the tally of signatures is up to 660.
#AACU #Academia #DefendResearch #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Update. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (#NOAA) maintains a public list of datasets and databases it's terminating.
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/documents-reports/notice-of-changes
Transparency about pulling the plug on transparency.
#Climate #DefendResearch #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "How #Trump is following #Project2025’s radical roadmap to defund science."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00780-2
"Indiscriminate firings. Terminated grants. Cancelled programmes. The barrage of actions by US President Donald Trump has shocked the country’s research community over the past two months. Yet, much of it was planned out years in advance and laid out publicly…The Wall Street Journal found that more than half of Trump’s executive orders (EOs) align with Project 2025 recommendations. And most of its 40 listed authors are now key figures on Trump’s team…Here, Nature examines science-related policies from Project 2025 that have already come to pass, and which ones might be on the horizon."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "National Science Foundation Terminates Hundreds of Active Research Awards"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/science/trump-national-science-foundation-grants.html
"In January, the #Trump administration attempted to freeze grant payments for existing awards at the #NSF. A temporary restraining order lifted the freeze. The order also said that the agency could not terminate active awards to comply with President Trump’s executive orders…In a statement on Friday, the NSF said that its grant cancellations were not in violation of the temporary restraining order. When asked by The Times to provide clarification on the legality of the grant cancellations, the agency declined to comment…On Friday, the NSF went further, canceling grants supporting ongoing research."
Update. "The federal Department of Education [#ED] maintains an open access database of more than 2 million documents [Education Resources Information Center, #ERIC] dating back to the 1960s. It will cease operating Wednesday due to #DOGE cuts."
https://www.governing.com/policy/major-education-resource-set-to-shut-down-this-week
PS: I use many sources in my attempt to stay on top of what's happening with #OpenAccess, #OpenScience, #OpenEducation, and so on. ERIC has been one of the stalwarts.
#DefendResearch #Education #Funding #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. The #OpenAccess Biodiversity Heritage Library (#BHL) needs a new home. The #Smithsonian will stop hosting it next January.
https://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/04/new-future-for-bhl.html
#Biodiversity #DefendResearch #ILoveBHL #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Funding cut for landmark study of women's health."
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/23/nx-s1-5372892/womens-health-initiative-research-funding-gets-cut
"The #Trump administration is shutting down most of a landmark federal project studying women's health, stunning researchers around the country…The study, begun in the 1990s, has produced a series of groundbreaking results and was continuing to gather valuable data about women's health…Neither the #NIH, which funds the study, nor #HHS, which oversees the NIH, responded to NPR's questions about the matter…One big question is what will happen to the huge repository of #data…which represents a treasure trove that could be mined to make yet more important discoveries."
#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. The long-running and wide-ranging study of women's health that #NIH cut two days was back on track the next day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/health/womens-health-initiative-cuts.html
PS: This is another sign that some protests work. It's also an example of thoughtless pillaging, as opposed to a careful attempt to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.
#DefendResearch #Medicine #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Groups Decry Loss of Funding for 'Critically Important' GI Disease Network."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/115251
"Physicians and patient advocates are sounding the alarm after the #NIH abruptly withdrew a grant renewal application for the Consortium of Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disease Researchers (#CEGIR), the only clinical care network for eosinophilic gastroenteritis patients in the U.S."
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (#AAAAI) says that NIH defunded the project, not on the merits, but because it uses "foreign components".
https://www.aaaai.org/about/news/news/2025/grant
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. At least five medical journals have now confirmed that the #Trump Justice Dept sent them letters asking what steps they take to deal with "misinformation" and "competing viewpoints".
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/115256
The three willing to be named are:
1. 𝘊𝘏𝘌𝘚𝘛, from the American College of Chest Physicians
2. 𝘖𝘣𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘴 & 𝘎𝘺𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
3. 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘦, from the Massachusetts Medical Society.
Update from Gary Price (@infodocket). "Accessing Archived Material From #ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) via the #InternetArchive."
https://www.infodocket.com/2025/04/23/accessing-archived-material-from-eric-via-the-internet-archive/
"Here are a couple ways to access archived material from ERIC on the open web. We will do our best to keep this post updated if/when new open web sources become available to access ERIC material."
#DefendResearch #Education #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Accessing Archived Material From ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) via the Internet Archive
Here are a couple ways to access archived material from ERIC on the open web. We will do our best to keep this post updated if/when new open web sources become available to access ERIC material. At this hour (9pm EDT, April 23) the ERIC.ed.gov site/database remains accessible (and searchable). We do not know if […]
Update from Lisa Schiff (@lschiff), "Protecting your work – and your values – in US higher education."
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/protecting-your-work-and-your-values-us-higher-education
"With US higher education under attack from the federal government, what can scholars do to ensure their research is preserved and to stand up for academic freedom? Lisa Schiff, a co-author of the Declaration to Defend Research."
#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Protecting your work – and your values – in US higher education
With US higher education under attack from the federal government, what can scholars do to ensure their research is preserved and to stand up for academic freedom? Lisa Schiff, a co-author of the Declaration to Defend Research Against US Government Censorship, explains
Update. "Impacts of Restrictions on Federal Grant Funding in Physics and Astronomy Graduate Programs."
https://ww2.aip.org/statistics/impacts-of-restrictions-on-federal-grant-funding-in-physics-and-astronomy-graduate-programs
"37% of the responding department chairs [in #physics and #astronomy] said they expect to enroll fewer first-year graduate students in the fall of 2025 than they did the previous year…The number of first-year graduate students in physics and astronomy is anticipated to decline by about 13%. This is a projected decline of about 600 first-year graduate students."
Update. People receiving an #NIH grant must now promise not to participate in #DEI programs or any boycott of #Israel or companies doing business in Israel. NIH calls this a "civil rights" condition on the grant.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-090.html
#CivilRights #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. Noam Ross and Scott Delaney maintain a crowdsourced database of #NIH grant terminations. Extremely helpful.
https://airtable.com/appjhyo9NTvJLocRy/shrNto1NNp9eJlgpA?Ffj6Q=allRecords
Meagan Parrish has put together a useful overview of what it contains.
https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/nih-hhs-cuts-trump-columbia-yale/746315/
Ross and Delaney also maintain a database of #NSF grant terminations. Right now it lists 501.
https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO
#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Scientist Who Helped Prove Humans Changed the Climate Watches Evidence Being Erased"
https://www.sfpublicpress.org/scientist-who-helped-prove-humans-changed-the-climate-watches-evidence-being-erased/
"Ben Santer never imagined that 12 words could change the trajectory of his life and humanity’s understanding of what it was doing to the planet: 'The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.' He wrote that sentence as the lead author of a pivotal chapter in the 1995 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [#IPCC]…Now the #data sources that made that discovery possible are under threat… 'There’s real concern that the data may go away, that the satellites, measurements that have been collected for 40 plus years, may not continue.'"
#Censorship #Climate #DefendResearch #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. I just did an interview for the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (#ZBW, @ZBW_MediaTalk) on the impact of #Trump admin actions on US research and higher education. Thanks to @avatter for the good questions.
https://www.zbw-mediatalk.eu/2025/04/peter-suber-on-science-in-danger-host-your-open-and-uncensored-research-in-more-than-one-place-and-preferably-more-than-one-country/
EDIT. ZBW has now released a German translation of the interview.
https://www.zbw-mediatalk.eu/de/2025/04/peter-suber-ueber-gefaehrdete-wissenschaft-hosten-sie-ihre-offene-und-unzensierte-forschung-an-mehr-als-einem-ort-und-moeglichst-in-mehr-als-einem-land/
#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
Update. "US dismisses all authors of National Climate Assessment."
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/trump-administration-dismisses-all-authors-key-climate-report-email-says-2025-04-28/
"President Donald Trump's administration has dismissed all contributors to the U.S. government's signature study that informs federal and local governments on how to prepare for climate change impacts…The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by Congress, leaves the future of the report in doubt."
Update. "#NIH Grant Cuts Aren't Saving Money. They're Wasting It."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-17/nih-grant-cuts-are-turning-out-to-be-a-waste-of-money?embedded-checkout=true
"The Trump administration’s waves of massive cuts to funding at the NIH 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…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."
Update. "‘The Classified Catalog’ launches to track secrecy news"
https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/the-classified-catalog-launches-to-track-secrecy-news/
"The [Trump] administration is eroding the information environment in ways this country has never seen. More secrets are being kept, more data is being deleted, and more government employees are being censored. This excessive secrecy prevents the public from meaningfully participating in self-government on domestic policies from climate and health issues to foreign affairs. To combat this, Freedom of the Press Foundation (#FPF) began tracking reports of government secrecy in January 2025."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Journalism #Monitoring #Secrecy #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Will US science survive Trump 2.0?"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01295-6
"In just the first three months of his second term, US President Donald Trump has destabilized eight decades of government support for science. His administration has fired thousands of government scientists, bringing large swathes of the country’s research to a standstill and halting many clinical trials. It has threatened to slash billions in funding from US research universities and has terminated more than 1,000 grants in areas such as climate change, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and HIV prevention. This looks likely to be just the beginning."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. Usha Lee McFarling has put together a very useful timeline of #Trump's major actions on science and health in his first 100 days.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/24/trump-100-days-timeline-science-health-nih-cdc-fda-hhs/
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
Update. One of many good points by Alice Meadows and Suze Kundu:
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/04/30/trump-v-research-how-we-could-turn-the-threats-into-opportunities/
When #Trump cuts budgets and staffing at science agencies, and terminates research grants, #journalists should write about the effects on people (less cancer research, more cancer), not just the effects on universities (less funding, more belt-tightening).
Trump v. Research: How We Could Turn the Threats into Opportunities - The Scholarly Kitchen
Alice Meadows and guest chef Suze Kundu look at how, by acting collectively across all stakeholder groups, we could turn the Trump administration's threats against research into opportunities
Update. "Accelerating Access to Research Results: New Implementation Date for the 2024 #NIH Public Access Policy"
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/accelerating-access-research-results-new-implementation-date-2024-nih-public-access-policy
"I am excited to announce that one of my first actions as NIH Director is pushing the accelerator on policies to make NIH research findings freely and quickly available to the public. The 2024 Public Access Policy, originally slated to go into effect on December 31, 2025, will now be effective as of July 1, 2025."
PS: This announcement is from the Trump-appointed NIH director, #JayBhattacharya. It's another sign that Trump has not revoked or weakened the #OSTP #NelsonMemo, despite other attacks on research, including #takedowns of #OpenAccess texts and data. At the NIH, the largest funding agency, implementation of the Nelson memo is even speeding up.
EDIT. Another NIH reaffirmation of its NelsonMemo OA policy. From Lyric Jorgenson, NIH Ass Director for Science Policy, April 30, 2025: "We revised our Public Access Policy to eliminate the embargo period so that researchers, students, and members of the public have rapid access to these findings. NIH leadership believes strongly that transparency in all we do is critical and that we should not waste a moment in fulfilling our promise to the public."
https://osp.od.nih.gov/transforming-transparency-through-policy/
Update. #RFKJr has ordered the #NIH to stop studying #ebola and half a dozen other fatal infectious diseases.
https://www.wired.com/story/hhs-niaid-irf-ebola-disease-research-stop/
Update. "Exclusive: #NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2
"Staff members at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) were told on 30 April to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice,” according to an email seen by Nature. The policy prevents the NSF, one of the world’s biggest supporters of basic research, from awarding new research grants and from supplying allotted funds for existing grants, such as those that receive yearly increments of money. The email does not provide a reason for the freeze and says that it will last 'until further notice'."
Update. "Amid DOGE-induced turmoil, National Science Foundation in crisis."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/05/01/science-funding-nsf-cuts/
"The 75-year-old government agency [#NSF] has one function: keep the U.S. science enterprise at the leading edge. In the past two weeks, however, the $9 billion agency, which exists entirely to fund science researchers, projects and facilities…hit reverse on its main mission."
Update. "#NIH under siege."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-insiders-trump-dismantling-and-destroying-everything
"Nearly 3 months into President Donald Trump’s administration, NIH in-house scientists and other workers [are] reeling from mass layoffs of colleagues; the removal of leaders; and limits on travel, communication, and purchasing that have shut the agency off from the outside world, hamstrung experiments, and crushed the community’s spirits…The atmosphere is one of 'chaos and fear and frustration and anger,' said a senior scientist with NIH’s intramural research program…This scientist added: 'It’s this feeling of utter powerlessness and repeated insults.'"
#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. "Education Department restarts online library #ERIC."
https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-restart-eric-ed-library/
"The US Department of Education announced Monday that it would continue to operate its online library, known as ERIC, after allowing it to lapse last week. The Department of Government Efficiency (#DOGE) had sought significant cuts to the document repository that is used by 14 million people a year, and allowed funding to run out on April 23…A new, albeit much smaller contract was signed on April 24…[Matthew Soldner, the acting director of the Institute of Education Sciences] said that 'no content has been removed or deleted from ERIC. The preservation policy is unchanged [and] we will not remove an article in ERIC unless it is retracted by the publisher.'"
#DefendResearch #Education #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Georgiann Baldino@petersuber
Unfortunately the NIH workers are not alone. #DOGE and #Trump are crippling multiple agencies.
Unfortunately the NIH workers are not alone. #DOGE and #Trump are crippling multiple agencies.
Frank Heijkamp@petersuber He would like to be responsible for the death of several millions of people?
WallOffTrump@petersuber
One way to make sure there are jobs for every living American is to kill off as many Americans as possible. The Purge. I'm sure it's their plan.
One way to make sure there are jobs for every living American is to kill off as many Americans as possible. The Purge. I'm sure it's their plan.
wobweger 
highlight 2025-01-31 banned language
https://pen.org/banned-words-list/
how incomprehensible was that,
and it looks like researchers are actually following at path to insanity
Fuzzy Leapfrog
bk
Lisa Schiff@petersuber @academicchatter Thank you Peter!
Fachportal Pädagogik@petersuber @infodocket
#ERIC ist mit knapp 2 Mio Nachweisen (Stand: Mai 2024) die weltweit umfangreichste bildungs- & erziehungswissenschaftl. relevante bibliografische Datenbank. Nachgewiesen wird seit 1966 überwiegend englischsprachige Literatur (Bücher, Zeitschriftenartikel, Forschungs-, Konferenzberichte u.a.) zu allen Bereichen der #Pädagogik.
Auch in unsere Suche ist #ERIC eingebunden. Künftig wird es also dank #DOGE viel weniger Treffer geben.
https://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/literatur/erweiterte_suche.html
@petersuber @infodocket Hier noch ein Artikel dazu:
Major Education Resource Set to Shut Down This Week. The federal Department of Education maintains an open access database of more than 2 million documents dating back to the 1960s. It will cease operating Wednesday due to DOGE cuts.
https://www.governing.com/policy/major-education-resource-set-to-shut-down-this-week
#eric #eduresearch #educationalresearch #Erziehungswissenschaft #Bildungsforschung #Fachliteratur #education #openaccess
Major Education Resource Set to Shut Down This Week. The federal Department of Education maintains an open access database of more than 2 million documents dating back to the 1960s. It will cease operating Wednesday due to DOGE cuts.
https://www.governing.com/policy/major-education-resource-set-to-shut-down-this-week
#eric #eduresearch #educationalresearch #Erziehungswissenschaft #Bildungsforschung #Fachliteratur #education #openaccess
@petersuber @infodocket
ERIC ist mit knapp 2 Mio Nachweisen (Stand: Mai 2024) die weltweit umfangreichste bildungs- & erziehungswissenschaftl. relevante bibliografische Datenbank. Nachgewiesen wird seit 1966 überwiegend englischsprachige Literatur (Bücher, Zeitschriftenartikel, Forschungs-, Konferenzberichte u.a.) zu allen Bereichen der #Pädagogik.
Auch in unsere Suche ist #ERIC eingebunden. Künftig wird es also dank #DOGE viel weniger Treffer geben.
https://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/literatur/erweiterte_suche.html
ERIC ist mit knapp 2 Mio Nachweisen (Stand: Mai 2024) die weltweit umfangreichste bildungs- & erziehungswissenschaftl. relevante bibliografische Datenbank. Nachgewiesen wird seit 1966 überwiegend englischsprachige Literatur (Bücher, Zeitschriftenartikel, Forschungs-, Konferenzberichte u.a.) zu allen Bereichen der #Pädagogik.
Auch in unsere Suche ist #ERIC eingebunden. Künftig wird es also dank #DOGE viel weniger Treffer geben.
https://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/literatur/erweiterte_suche.html
