Thanks to these researchers and 25 others for trusting us with their stories. We've published two initial pieces on the survey, with more coverage in the works. Links to our stories below.
(Main story) www.statnews.com/2026/03/19/n...
(Accompanying piece) www.statnews.com/2026/03/19/n...
Our @statnews.com survey of NIH-funded researchers drew nearly 1,000 responses from 45 states (plus DC and Puerto Rico). Here's a short thread on 5 scientists' whose labs and lives have been deeply impacted by federal policies 🧵
Iris Smith, a staff scientist at Cleveland Clinic, had high hopes for studying endometriosis, a disease that has defined her own life. But NIH cancelled her funding, and her employment contract will expire at the end of March. "This can’t be how it ends,” said Smith, who's figuring out next steps.
Johns Hopkins' Carl Latkin has data from ~ 500 participants in an HIV study sitting in the cloud unanalyzed after NIH shut off his funding. "Right now I cannot, in good faith, encourage the best and the brightest students to go into a career of NIH-funded research," he told @aniloza.bsky.social
Harvard's Josiemer Mattei had participants drop out of a diabetes prevention study in Puerto Rico after NIH terminated her funding last year. While funding was restored, the trial site she was working with stopped working with her -- and with academics at all -- in part because of the disruption.
When NIH terminated a grant for Northwestern's Minoli Perera to study responses to clopidogrel, a blood thinner, in Puerto Ricans, $250,000 "might as well have been flushed down the toilet, because you built all of this to do nothing with it,” she told me. “I find it just sickening to think about.”
Mariya Sweetwyne, an assistant prof at the University of Washington, is down to just 1 lab member after NIH rescinded a grant program through which she'd sought funding. She's reduced her mouse colony by half. Each morning, her daughter hands her a few coins and asks, “Is this going to be enough?”
#CDC has been without a director for most of Trump 2.0. A new nominee was put forward today, Erika Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general. (Nomination was scooped earlier this week by @ddiamond.bsky.social & @lenasun.bsky.social).
Let's see what happens. www.statnews.com/2026/04/16/e...
Jonathan Wosen
Jonathan Wosen
Jonathan Wosen
Jonathan Wosen
Jonathan Wosen
Jonathan Wosen
Jonathan Wosen
Helen Branswell 🇨🇦
STAT FDA reporter @lizzylawrence.bsky.social asks HHS chief counselor Chris Klomp about the turnover at the FDA.
Klomp: “When I see turnover in any organization — could be the FDA, it could be another — it's worrisome…”
#STATBreakthrough
The Trump administration is weighing how to respond to a court ruling on vaccine policymaking, a decision that could come with political risks. www.statnews.com/2026/03/20/k...
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A nationwide STAT survey of NIH-funded researchers reveals that, a year after Donald Trump's return to the White House, many scientists are reeling
