The proposed change to how the National Institutes of Health handles grant applications has been criticized by scientists as reducing transparency
By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron
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Members of the public who tried to submit their views on a proposed change to the National Institutes of Health’s grant funding system say they found themselves locked out after the system shut down ahead of schedule.
The proposed change has been criticized as potentially reducing transparency. It seeks to revise how grant application scores—averaged measures of a research project's predicted outcomes—are communicated to both funding applicants and NIH program officers.
Under the change, applications would be sorted into three broad categories of merit, while their overall score, as determined by a panel of experts, would remain a secret. Some researchers have said this could open up the grant approval process to undue political influence.
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Ahead of any rule change, the NIH invited members of the public to have their voices heard by submitting comments through a website portal, which opened in August. On a version of the site soliciting comments stored on the Wayback Machine, the deadline is shown as “11:59:59 P.M. EST [sic]” on October 13. The system for sending in comments appeared to shut down hours early, however, with several scientists posting on social media that when they tried to submit comments ahead of that time, they were unable to do so. Speaking to Scientific American, Joshua Weitz, a biology professor at the University of Maryland, says he attempted to access the site before the midnight deadline and could not.
The proposal marks the latest attempt by the Trump administration to have greater influence over federal science grants. Floated earlier this year, a separate bid to have political appointees—rather than independent expert panels—decide grant recipients garnered significant backlash. That earlier proposal was put on hold until at least December after Congress rejected the change.
The NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Editor’s Note (10/14/26): This is a developing news story and may be updated.
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