Put. All. The. Arsenal. Players. On.

Wait, I thought Amgen scientists were the ones concerned about rigor of the academic literature? 🤔 Medical journal retracts paper on Amgen’s Tavneos drug trial after FDA findings | Reuters share.google/O119v7aPjBH5...

Had all 4 PhD students graduate in the last year. Found a soft landing for a tech that’s been in the lab for 5 years. Down to one half time staff scientist and 2 undergrads. Will rehire if one of my pending grants hits, and will operate with a skeleton crew if not.

We are also fortunate to have an active R01, but natural movings-on (promotion, grad., end-of-window, etc.) will have us down 3/8 by end of summer. R01 with second-best R01 IS of my career sitting on the weak side of limbo. Right now we can't replace value/production on good projects. It sucks.

Just got an R01 and an R21, but I have several folk who already left and a couple others I managed to maintain for a bit on a combo of bridge and (very) limited endowment funds, so we'll likely be stable

We are facing the inevitable reduction in force in my lab in the new year. I'm lucky that I've managed to get a new R01, but getting historically fundable scores on other apps (but no funding given paylines) won't be enough. How is everyone else doing right now? How many people are we losing?

NIH seeks input on capping grant awards drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/06/09/n...

And this is just the start.

RFI: Proposal to Cap the Number of Simultaneous Research Project Grants per Principal Investigator to Support More Researchers and Maximize Scientific Productivity and Innovation grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

If Cell Signaling Technology doesn't have the antibody you want, proceed with caution.

The good thing about the Thermo Fisher scandal is that there is such a vibrant industry full of independent suppliers that are just primed and ready to do business with us.

Members of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) were removed by police during the organization's annual meeting on Friday as they handed out copies of an editorial criticizing Trump administration changes to U.S. biomedical research. www.medpagetoday.com/special-repo...

I mean, nobody is surprised by this.....right????

"Uncertain federal funding means that next year, MIT may have about 500 fewer graduate students helping us to push the scientific frontier and preparing to contribute to society as scientists, inventors, designers, and entrepreneurs."

I heard that the the NIA is only moving grants forward with scores of 2%ile or less. I hope that's not true.

HR departments at universities just confuse the hell out of me.

3/3

New deep dive from me into the anti-science movement, it's structure, tactics, and impact on science and society. Some data analysis, unique testimonies, new infographics and also a first attempt at outlining broadly-agreed upon actions how to fight back. 1/ open.substack.com/pub/protagon...

Project 2025 called for gutting the EPA's scientific research office. In under a year, the Trump Administration has done exactly that, taking a division of more than 1,500 scientists down to 124…

Bhattacharya Appropriation Oversight Hearing drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/17/b...

Thanks Biden

Thanks Biden

"My name may be forgotten when it comes, but the time will arrive when great outbreaks of cholera will be things of the past. And it is the knowledge of the way in which the disease is propagated which will cause them to disappear" Happy birthday to John Snow! His name & his work is not forgotten.

Better than the MLS

The only thing we can control is submitting the best proposals we can and max out the 6 sub per year limit, and go in as Co-Investigator on as many other proposals as possible. Maximize the chances by maximizing submissions. Everything else is up to the fates and not worth spending mental energy on

Here is the "effective payline" for each institute, estimated (by Claude) as the percentile where one can expect 80% probability of funding from a logistic regression fit. The effective payline has gone from a historic ~12% to 6% in 2025.

Some shit is about to go down with NIH study sections, friends. Keep your eyes peeled for change that may affect your grant submissions.

Most labs are always a single grant away from going under

Today in "everybody is firmly convinced that they and their type of science is at particular and specific disadvantage at the NIH no matter any evidence to the contrary".... drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/n...

Check this out straight from the NIH website, acknowledging that multiyear funding was likely responsible for a 20% decrease in early stage investigators. And that it was expected. A strange approach for someone so committed to the next generation of scientists. grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

Other European countries are doing the same thing and investing a lot of money. Watch this space.

Well, there goes the entire business model for Biorender. arxiv.org/abs/2601.23265

NIDA: 0 NIAAA: 0

The NIDDK has still only issued a total of 3 new R01s since October 1.

This is not true. MYF is capped at FY25 levels, where 39% of all awards were MYF. We need to be very precise about this because the impact is enormous.

Solution? Hire more administrators. See how this works?

Can we still add a link to our NCBI page in the new biosketch? I guess it could be added to the personal statement section.

A further blow to UK science and Universities 😱 www.timeshighereducation.com/news/three-u...

So, how are you guys listing your pubs in the contribution to science section in the new SciENcv?

What we also need to factor in now is that a lot of A0s with very competitive scores will be coming back in as A1s. That would have an enormous impact, even under normal conditions, but now it's just a total disaster.

Calafiori and Havertz in the starting XI. I got my joy back.

3 new R01s funded by NIDDK this FY.

Everything is a "resubmit" right now.

We stop talking about percentiles, paylines etc like it's the before times. Admin and leadership are still doing that because it still hasn't hit them yet. POs don't even know what the rules are anymore so grant reviews are just performative. We're working back channels to get our grants funded.

I do not trust the Democrats to get this DHS/ICE funding/shutdown thing right. They have demonstrated over and over again that they are pathetic in opposition.

We're definitely facing another NIH shutdown now. The organization is already essentially frozen, so I expect that to just continue. Absolute shambles.

Now applications are getting kicked to SEPs due to a "surge in applications". Everything is fine.

We don't need councils anymore. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A reminder for the reviewers of #NIHGrants "Nice" NIH study sections screw their applicants because of the way NIH calculates percentile. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/11/20/n...