NIH Staff Lambaste Agency Head for Censorship of Science

Hundreds of staff at the National Institutes of Health are publicly condemning the agency’s actions in recent months, including firing thousands of workers and canceling research grants for projects that don’t align with the Trump administration’s ideologies. 

In a letter sent Monday morning to Jay Bhattacharya, the Trump-appointed NIH director who gained notoriety for his criticism of the NIH’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 300 employees from across the agency called on him to deliver on his promise to embrace dissent, which he has called “the very essence of science.”

“We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,” states the letter, titled the Bethesda Declaration (Bethesda, Md., is the location of the NIH’s main campus) and modeled after Bhattacharya’s own Great Barrington Declaration, which condemned the NIH in 2020 for ignoring his calls to mostly cease pandemic-related precautions.

“This censorship is incompatible with academic freedom, which should not be applied selectively based on political ideology.”

In addition to accusing Bhattacharya of politicizing research, the letter published Monday also criticized the agency for “undermining” peer review, unilaterally capping indirect costs and firing NIH staff. 

Bhattacharya is scheduled to appear before the Senate appropriations subcommittee today to discuss Trump’s proposal to cut $18 billion or about 40 percent from the NIH’s budget.