Comments on the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Cut to Low-Cost Research Research: A Response to Nature and the Department of Health and Human Services
The policy, announced late on 7 February by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), would have cut ‘research overhead’ to 15% for new and existing grants. The National Institutes of Health awarded over twenty-six billion dollars to be used by scientists to pay their workers’ salaries and buy equipment for their laboratories, but only $9 billion went to these overhead costs, which are sometimes referred to as indirect costs. The indirect-costs rate varies from 40% to 75% for some institutions.
The NIH notice does not mention DEI, and the Heritage Foundation report does not recommend a 15 percent cap specifically. But the federal agency justifies its slashed rate in part by citing a “recent analysis” that found that 67 out of 72 universities were willing to accept research grants with no indirect cost coverage. The notice doesn’t give a source for that analysis, but it seems to have come from the Heritage Foundation report.
The report claims that a 1 percentage point increase in the federal indirect cost rate is associated with 2.1 additional DEI employees, while a $100 million increase in the total amount of indirect costs received by a university is associated with 15.5 additional DEI employees.
The rates have risen steadily since the 1960s due to regulations governing laboratory research and how federal dollars are spent. The regulations include measures to ensure data privacy, to protect animal welfare and human participants in research studies, and to govern collaborations with researchers in other countries.
Direct costs, paid for by research grants, help scientists buy equipment for specific projects and cover salaries of lab personnel running them. But research institutions also need to pay for air conditioning, electricity, computing resources, hazardous-waste disposal, administrative personnel and much more to support research projects.
The NIH referred Nature to its parent agency, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for comments about the lawsuits. Nature asked about whether it would give more money to researchers to make up for the cap, which it did not reply to. Andrew Nixon, the HHS spokesman, said that the agency doesn’t discuss ongoing litigation and will not be answering questions about the indirect-costs policy.
The policy would upend the enterprise, according to researchers. Alondra Nelson, who directed the US Office of Science and Technology Policy for eight months under former US president and Democrat Joe Biden, wrote on the social-media platform Bluesky that it would lead to a “generational restructuring” of the US research and development ecosystem.
Some research institutions took precautionary measures on Monday after the cut. In an e-mail seen by Nature, the University of Florida in Gainesville, which has an indirect-costs rate of 52.5%, told its staff members that new awards and the projects they fund at the 15% rate would be frozen, because its accounting department has not been authorized to charge the agency the lower rate.
First hearing on the 15% cap on scientific research costs: The US state lawsuit argues that the policy is irresponsible, and it should be interpreted with caution
A hearing will be held on Feburary 21 to further consider the petitions, after which Judge Angel Kelley can make a final decision.
Although Donald Trump won a number of the states that sued, the attorneys general of them are Democrats. The effects of the policy would be “immediate and devastating”, their lawsuit said. There will be layoffs, suspension of trials, and disruption of research programs because of this agency action.
The 15% cap is necessary to “ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead”, acting NIH director Matthew Memoli said in the memorandum announcing the change.
A US judge halted the policy that would have slashed billions of dollars of funding annually for US research institutions. The action was taken after lawsuits were filed by 22 US states and a coalition of universities in which they contended that the policy would cause cutting- edge work to cure and treat human disease to halt.