Jeff Lewis

Same with a gin and tonic. I also find them to be the comfort food of cocktails.

This RFI includes a request for input on the notion of peer review compensation. In case you were not motivated to reply on the publishing costs, this is another issue of importance to some.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Gen X will never live up to its scientific potential The NIH Director, Francis Collins, was speaking to Congress this week and was widely quoted as lamenting the fate of junior scientists. As per this Sam Stein bit in HuffPo: “This is the issue that …

Why I have no idea what you mean...

drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/g...

What killed the competitive renewal at NIH? Following up on yesterday’s whinesplaining about the relative difficulty of getting a NIH grant across pertinent career eras, I had some more thoughts on generational expectations and gasligh…

What killed the competitive renewal at NIH? drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/w...

At the risk of sounding entitled, I am a bit bitter that it never got easier for post-boomers once we ‘made it.’

On page 140 of the bill, in line 18, insert “Sec. 239. None of the funds appropriated by this Act may be used to increase the proportion of multi-year grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health in fiscal year 2026 that are fully funded in the first year of the award...

Ah, didn't realize that you could go for an R35 with a DP2. Frustrating that it's so slow, but it would be exceptionally odd if that score wasn't funded. 🍀

🤔 I could understand if it was 3 years left on a large grant, but 1 year isn't really a buffer. I'm torn on the DP2. It's a lot of funding, but it precludes getting a MIRA, making it harder to stay NIGMS-funded.

Big shout out to @c4lifesciences.bsky.social working with Baldwin's team to highlight the poison pill that is multi-year funding.

Delighted to represent @asm.org on this group. Your academic societies play important roles in advocacy!

From Senator @murray.senate.gov: the Senate's proposed NIH budget would reject 40% cuts, increase funding by $400M.

"We're not going to give up the fight against cancer, Alzheimer's or rare diseases."

Message to scientists: "we support you. We need you to stay here & keep this research going."

Would be a huge signal to the NIH

Keeping pushing folks. Make your Reps aware. Especially if you're in a red state.

In the last 2-3 years, they opened up MIRAs to NIs (they are reviewed alongside other EI MIRAs). If you are not a NI (or ESI), but you do not currently have NIGMS funding, you would need to apply for an NIGMS R01 and convert. I have a NI MIRA pending (I have only had NSF funding to date).

I'm firmly mid-career, but NI, and my PO has been encouraging me to keep pushing for the MIRA. It is challenging because the competition is mostly EIs either renewing MIRAs (including ESI's first renewals), or EIs converting 1 or more R01s.

Other pots in the fire. And really just trying to focus on the fun science going on in the lab. We gotta focus on why we got into this game in the first place. (But yes, for work-life balance, read, play games with the kids, try not to hurt myself too much doing sports...)

If you are an established investigator without an NIGMS R01, you need to get an R01 and then convert to a MIRA. For ESIs and NIs, MIRA is the way.

This was for Jan 2025, so scored in June and going to council in Sept. I may have to wait until the end of FY26 to know.

a cartoon of a man and a dog with the words now 's the time for action written on the bottom ALT: a cartoon of a man and a dog with the words now 's the time for action written on the bottom

IMPORTANT UPDATE IMPORTANT UPDATE

Regarding APHU/ACLU et al. vs. NIH Lawsuit

I was rather disappointed that they didn't release the trends from FY24 this year. Though I'm guessing that would give me less hope for my pending MIRA.

This reminded me of a comment on an NIGMS Loop post about expanding the MIRA program that almost cost me a new laptop. Fuck this type of asshole who is so intellectually lazy that they have to outsource gatekeeping. And again, they're wrong about MIRAs being percentiled in the first place.

MIRAs only receive impact scores and are not percentiled. And as mentioned by @azfaust.bsky.social, NIGMS screens heavily on topic, so many MIRAs are administratively withdrawn. If you look at NIGMS R01s, they again don't have strict paylines, but there is an inflection at the ~20th percentile.

I was a grad student right at the end of the doubling, and I remember Profs complaining that they had to resubmit a grant (which they then got after a second try). What I would give if 1/5 of submissions were funded...

Indeed, it is very frustrating that some academics who came of age during the doubling are unwilling to concede that their academic lives got easier as they reached mid-career (and then reaped the benefits beyond). 'It's always been hard' is not truthful, helpful, or empathetic.

Shout out to the WSJ journalists who reported on Vought’s impoundment by footnote, causing the White House to walk it back. Impact journalism!!

Thanks. I’m learning way too much in recent times about the minutiae of Reporter.

This comment is missing the point that one multi-year PI who stops submitting is traded for four (themselves and the three others unfunded due to the out years) who would have stopped under normal funding.

That’s the play for the budget cut request.

Sadly that’s the point. Those funds will simply be lost at end of the fiscal year.

Looking at award notice dates in Reporter, and none were issued yesterday or today. There could be a lag in when those get entered, but there are awards listed with an NOA date of 7/25 (last Friday).

Shit. This might be the pocket rescission play. The article says that $15B is unobligated. The FY25 budget is ~49B, so that's a 30% cut.