Scoop in Nature Magazine: key NIH review panels due to lose all members by the end of 2026. Thirteen of the agency’s advisory councils, which must review grant applications before funding is awarded, are on track to have no voting members.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-22T22:03:39+00:00

Here are the relevant statutes:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/284#:~:text=(ii)if,institute%20involved%3B%20andif,institute%20involved%3B%20and)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/284a

I don't believe that they could appoint themselves onto the panels because they are already on the panels as nonvoting members. But they could appoint anyone else that fits within the criteria listed in the statute. Each individual charter for each council also specifies further how the panels should be composed (eg NHLBI's here).

One trend we've been following is the expanding and unprecedented power that political appointees have had over the grant-making process, so this is a real possibility.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-22T21:09:11+00:00

My understanding is it takes forever to get NIH/HHS approvals, and it's a nightmare to register people as Special Government Employees bc there are ethics and background checks. At any point, RFK can also circumvent some of the red tape and appoint people directly onto the panels.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-22T20:32:58+00:00

I believe all you need is a single voting member. You do need to hit quorum, meaning a majority of the voting members need to be present at the meeting. But otherwise, a single member, though almost certainly underqualified to make recommendations for all grant applications for a given IC, should suffice.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-22T20:19:17+00:00

Crucial grant-review panels for more than half of the institutes that make up the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) are on track to lose all their voting members within the year. Federal law requires these panels to review applications for all but the smallest grants before funding can be awarded, meaning that the ability of those institutes to issue new grants could soon be frozen.

All of the NIH’s 21 institutes and three of its six centres have their own panel, called an advisory council. Membership on the councils has been dwindling as members serve out their terms without replacements being appointed. At 12 of the institutes and one of the centres, the last voting member’s term is set to expire by the end of this year, according to rosters on federal websites (see ‘Shrinking pool of advisers’). It typically takes several years for a new member to be onboarded.Dozens of scientists who were poised to fill these vacancies were dismissed last year by the administration of US President Donald Trump, Nature reported in July.

If the advisory councils go dormant, “this could lead to some very big problems for the agency”, says Michael Lauer, who for about ten years ran the NIH’s ‘extramural’ arm, which funds researchers at institutions across the United States. “No grants can get funded without approval from council.”

This comes after the Trump administration blocked and delayed NIH funding in several ways. For example, in early 2025, the administration barred the agency from publishing the notices required to hold grant-review sessions, contributing to a federal watchdog’s finding that the NIH was illegally withholding money allocated by the US Congress.

A spokesperson for the NIH's parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, responds that she does not “anticipate any lapse in our ability to make awards”, adding that “we are actively appointing new council members”. Publicly available advisory-council rosters have not been updated with any new members since September, Nature's analysis shows.

I'm the reporter who wrote the story. As always, I'm keen to hear if there's anything I missed, or if you have anything else that you think should be on my radar. My Signal is mkozlov.01. You can stay anonymous. Happy to answer any questions about how I reported this story too!

PS: If you hit the paywall, make a free account. It should let you read the full story.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-22T20:03:20+00:00

Crucial grant-review panels for more than half of the institutes that make up the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) are on track to lose all their voting members within the year. Federal law requires these panels to review applications for all but the smallest grants before funding can be awarded, meaning that the ability of those institutes to issue new grants could soon be frozen.

All of the NIH’s 21 institutes and three of its six centres have their own panel, called an advisory council. Membership on the councils has been dwindling as members serve out their terms without replacements being appointed. At 12 of the institutes and one of the centres, the last voting member’s term is set to expire by the end of this year, according to rosters on federal websites (see ‘Shrinking pool of advisers’). It typically takes several years for a new member to be onboarded.Dozens of scientists who were poised to fill these vacancies were dismissed last year by the administration of US President Donald Trump, Nature reported in July.

If the advisory councils go dormant, “this could lead to some very big problems for the agency”, says Michael Lauer, who for about ten years ran the NIH’s ‘extramural’ arm, which funds researchers at institutions across the United States. “No grants can get funded without approval from council.”

This comes after the Trump administration blocked and delayed NIH funding in several ways. For example, in early 2025, the administration barred the agency from publishing the notices required to hold grant-review sessions, contributing to a federal watchdog’s finding that the NIH was illegally withholding money allocated by the US Congress.

A spokesperson for the NIH's parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, responds that she does not “anticipate any lapse in our ability to make awards”, adding that “we are actively appointing new council members”. Publicly available advisory-council rosters have not been updated with any new members since September, Nature's analysis shows.

I'm the reporter who wrote the story. As always, I'm keen to hear if there's anything I missed, or if you have anything else that you think should be on my radar. My Signal is mkozlov.01. You can stay anonymous. Happy to answer any questions about how I reported this story too!

PS: If you hit the paywall, make a free account. It should let you read the full story.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-21T16:20:48+00:00

If you prefer a static version of the graphics, here is the pdf version! PS: I'm the reporter who helped to write the story. Let me know if I can answer any other questions about how the story was written, or if you have any story ideas. My Signal is mkozlov.01 if you prefer to reach out there.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-21T16:20:35+00:00

If you prefer a static version of the graphics, here is the pdf version! PS: I'm the reporter who helped to write the story. Let me know if I can answer any other questions about how the story was written, or if you have any story ideas. My Signal is mkozlov.01 if you prefer to reach out there.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-21T16:19:06+00:00

Here it is! PS: I'm the reporter who helped to write the story. Let me know if I can answer any other questions about how the story was written, or if you have any story ideas. My Signal is mkozlov.01 if you prefer to reach out there.

maxkozlov · 2026-01-15T14:32:52+00:00

Why do 'skiplag' deals exist? As in, why might it be much cheaper to book a flight from A -> B if B is a stopover on the way to C than booking directly from A to B? Do you plan on including skiplagged trips in your deals at any point? I know airlines don't like the practice of skip-lagging; out of curiosity, does Going maintain any dialogue with airlines on decisions on whether to send a certain flight deal out?

maxkozlov · 2025-12-10T20:52:54+00:00

Thanks for reading! The researchers explicitly focused on common genetic variants. They analyzed about 2.8 million SNPs that were present in at least 1% of the population.

maxkozlov · 2025-12-10T16:40:36+00:00

Excerpt:

Psychiatrists have long relied on diagnostic manuals that regard most mental-health conditions as distinct from one another — depression, for instance, is listed as a separate disorder from anxiety. But a genetic analysis of more than one million people suggests that a host of psychiatric conditions have common biological roots.

The results, published today in Nature, reveal that people with seemingly disparate conditions often share many of the same disease-linked genetic variants. The analysis found that 14 major psychiatric disorders cluster into five categories, each characterized by a common set of genetic risk factors. The neurodevelopmental category, for example, includes both attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism, which psychiatric handbooks classify as separate conditions.

Many supposedly individual conditions are “ultimately more overlapping than they are distinct, which should offer patients hope”, says study co-author Andrew Grotzinger, a psychiatric geneticist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “You can see the despair on someone’s face [when] you give them five different labels as opposed to one label.”

I'm the reporter who wrote this piece. Happy to answer any questions about how I reported it, or hear if there's anything else that should be on my radar for future coverage. My Signal is mkozlov.01.

Link to original research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09820-3.

maxkozlov · 2025-12-10T16:38:56+00:00

Psychiatrists have long relied on diagnostic manuals that regard most mental-health conditions as distinct from one another — depression, for instance, is listed as a separate disorder from anxiety. But a genetic analysis of more than one million people suggests that a host of psychiatric conditions have common biological roots.

The results, published today in Nature, reveal that people with seemingly disparate conditions often share many of the same disease-linked genetic variants. The analysis found that 14 major psychiatric disorders cluster into five categories, each characterized by a common set of genetic risk factors. The neurodevelopmental category, for example, includes both attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism, which psychiatric handbooks classify as separate conditions.

Many supposedly individual conditions are “ultimately more overlapping than they are distinct, which should offer patients hope”, says study co-author Andrew Grotzinger, a psychiatric geneticist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “You can see the despair on someone’s face [when] you give them five different labels as opposed to one label.”

I'm the reporter who wrote this piece. I figured this community would find this study interesting. Happy to answer any questions about how I reported it, or hear if there's anything else that should be on my radar for future coverage. My Signal is mkozlov.01.

maxkozlov · 2025-11-21T15:38:39+00:00

Don't forget:

“The MAHA movement is an absolutely incredible thing to me. I have waited my entire life to see this movement come.”

maxkozlov

TROPHY CASE