1. United States
2. Ill.
3. Letter

For eight decades, peer review has been the cornerstone of NIH grant funding — the firewall separating scientific merit from political preference. That firewall has been demolished. An August 2025 executive order gave political officers the power to summarily cancel any federal grant not "consistent with agency priorities," and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya followed with an internal memorandum explicitly stating that political priorities may override the scoring system provided by outside scientific experts. This isn't a procedural adjustment. It is a fundamental inversion of how American science works. Undark Magazine (https://undark.org/2025/09/09/nih-grant-decisions/) NIH institutes and centers have now been directed to move away from paylines — percentile cutoffs based on peer review scores — and instead weigh grants against NIH's political priorities, strategic plans, and budgets. As a clinician researcher, my science is now evaluated not solely on its rigor, significance, or innovation, but on whether it aligns with the ideological preferences of appointees who may have no relevant scientific training. Congress.gov (https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF13131) The consequences extend beyond funding decisions. After peer review, NIH now uses a computational tool to scan grant language for politically sensitive words like "gender," "equity," and "diversity," and sends spreadsheets of flagged grants to institutes for renegotiation. My research aims are now subject to political keyword filtering before a dollar is awarded. Science (https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-hhs-now-weighing-science-nih-grants) A dozen current and former NIH officials have warned that downgrading peer review opens the door to political appointees stopping grants that would otherwise be funded — and funding grants that don't meet rigorous scientific standards. Undark Magazine (https://undark.org/2025/09/09/nih-grant-decisions/) This is the destruction of American scientific research — not through budget cuts alone, but through the replacement of expertise with ideology at the very moment of funding decisions. When politics determines what questions science is permitted to ask, we are no longer doing science.