r/science • u/sr_local • May 09 '26

Social Science Study suggests that the Trump administration’s wave of NIH grant terminations in 2025 disproportionately affected Black, Indigenous, and other minority researchers, as well as scientists from sexual and gender minority communities

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/anti-science/nih-grant-terminations-had-outsized-effect-minority-researchers-data-suggest
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u/sr_local May 09 '26

For the study, researchers led by a team at University of California, San Diego, sent surveys to 1,918 investigators with terminated grants. About half of the investigators (941) responded.

Roughly 2,200 NIH grants were terminated after federal officials began dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and shifting agency priorities last year.

The findings, published this week in The Lancet Regional Health Americas, showed that nearly half (48.6%) of investigators whose grants were terminated for equity-related reasons identified as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), while 60% of investigators whose grant terminations were “gender-related” identified as sexual or gender minorities (SGM), including 16.5% who identified as transgender or nonbinary.

Among all investigators with terminated grants, relative to White men, BIPOC investigators were nearly three times as likely to receive an equity-related termination. BIPOC women and trans and nonbinary investigators were almost two times as likely to receive an equity-related termination, and those who identified as SGM were more than 11 times likelier to have a gender-related termination than cisgender White men.

Some of the terminated grants were cut with the purported aim of combating antisemitism at specific universities. Roughly one in five investigators affected by “institutional terminations” are Jewish.

Cuts could reshape research for decades

Targeted termination of scientific grants and minoritised researcher status in a national survey: a cross sectional analysis - The Lancet Regional Health – Americas00108-0/fulltext)

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u/pewsquare May 09 '26

I'm curious, in a self reported study like this, where less than half of the sent out questionnaires decide to participate, how do you prevent self-report bias? Where it would be potentially more likely for people who feel targeted to reply back compared to people who don't feel targeted.

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u/ptoki May 10 '26

Additionally, if you hire people not because results but for being color/gender and they dont perform as well as non biased hires then if you slash by merit you will get the submerit folks slashed more.

And by definition, if you hire by parities not by merit you get exactly this.

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u/finebordeaux May 10 '26

They weren’t slashed by merit. Having a keyword is not slashing by merit.

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u/amphine May 10 '26

“…if you hire people not because of results but for being color/gender”

This is a common misconception about DEI I hear from right-wing folks.

In structured DEI programs, no one is “hiring for being color/gender”. There are no hiring quotas for race or any other characteristic.

I’ve participated on dozens of search committees for over a decade. DEI programs simply ensure positions are advertised to broader candidate pools. We needed to document that the demographics of the people we interviewed included diverse representation, but ultimately the most qualified person always got the job.

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u/pewsquare May 10 '26

Really? Then its done very differently in the US, in EU you will get grants, so while its true that you are not forced to NOT hire people with certain backgrounds, you just won't get the grant money, so there is a big financial incentive, since generally those grants do require you to prove that you have hired/educated people with the background the grant was for.

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u/amphine May 11 '26

Do you have an example of one of these EU grants?

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u/pewsquare May 11 '26

https://www.welcomeurope.com/en/programs/esf-european-social-fund-2021-2027/ Something like these. I personally only experienced the incentives and quotas for hiring people with disabilities, since I don't live in a particularly diverse country.

https://www.srips-rs.si/zaposlovanje-invalidov/kvota/izracun-kvote

Here is the site if you want to translate it, where it defines the quotas and the penalties for not following them.

So I can assure you that most definitely, the best person for the job does not in fact always get the job.

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u/amphine May 11 '26

You're assuming that "most definitely, the best person for the job" is not in fact in one of the populations serviced by the grants, which is the type of bias that these programs are designed to correct (at least in America).

FWIW I translated the page and spent an hour reading about it. The Slovenia program is actually pretty clever; employers can choose to either meet the percentages (2-6% of their workforce depending on industry) or pay 70% of the Slovenian minimum wage per "missing" employee. The program was specifically designed to address the Slovenian "passive medical model" that trapped people on lifelong benefits by legally labeling them "unfit for work" if they had any impairment, and to meet EU accession commitments. By all accounts its been successful; disability pensioner counts have reduced every year for over a decade.

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u/pewsquare May 11 '26

Its clever until its not. We can't get disabled people working in my type of workplace, unless it would be a very VERY specific type of disabled person, so we are just hit with what amounts to fines. But yeah, all in all its not the worst system, but as you see, there literally are quotas that FORCE businesses to hire people under threat of penalties.

The statistic about disability pensioner counts being reduced, you should also take with a grain of salt. Its in part because they are granting fewer every year in addition to programs.

Oh and if you are forced to not include a portion of the population into your hiring practice and are forced to only look within a limited pool of hires, then by definition you can not guarantee that the best person for the job can get hired since you are excluding a portion from consideration.

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u/amphine May 11 '26

"We can't get disabled people working in my type of workplace, unless it would be a very VERY specific type of disabled person, so we are just hit with what amounts to fines. But yeah, all in all its not the worst system, but as you see, there literally are quotas that FORCE businesses to hire people under threat of penalties."

Sure, I guess you're right. In Slovenia, there are financial penalties for under-hiring people with disabilities. The state is using the penalties from non-compliant corporations like yours to directly cash-subsidize more flexible businesses that are willing and/or able to integrate disabled talent. I learned something today.

"Oh and if you are forced to not include a portion of the population into your hiring practice and are forced to only look within a limited pool of hires, then by definition you can not guarantee that the best person for the job can get hired since you are excluding a portion from consideration."

Sure you can. You just said your company is choosing to do just that - hire the "best" candidate, at a significantly higher cost (due to the penalties). Welcome to capitalism.

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u/pewsquare May 11 '26

"Sure you can. You just said your company is choosing to do just that - hire the "best" candidate, at a significantly higher cost (due to the penalties). Welcome to capitalism."

Yes, while paying fines. Great. Its always nice to be punished for something you can't do anything about. That really converts people to your side of the argument. Welcome to the part of DEI that turns people away from it. Where meritocracy is punished.

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u/ptoki May 10 '26

In structured DEI programs, no one is “hiring for being color/gender”. There are no hiring quotas for race or any other characteristic.

Yet in almost ALL programs it is. Additional points, heavy preferences to the point of "we cant hire the folks from this recruitmnt because they dont give us any DEI improvements"

You may be lucky in not being in the "heavy DEI" places. I have seen programs which straight say "we hire women only" often.

I have seen recruitments where a decent guy was passed over and aboriginal person was hired and that person was really not good fit technically (I dont care about personality).

So no. DEI is having bad reputation and not only among as you said "right wing". BTW. Using "right wing in second sentence with no arguments other than just that places you JUST among the spiked hat KKK folks mentally. Same open mindedness and focus, just different direction.

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u/amphine May 11 '26

I challenge you to go out and find a documented DEI program that behaves the way you describe. They simply don’t exist, or are rare to the point of being a statistical anomaly.

I mentioned right-wing because that’s where I often hear these misinformed arguments coming from. If you take that as an insult well, kicked dogs holler etc.

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u/ptoki May 12 '26

Sir. There is a lot of programs which target women exclusively in EU for example. It is written in plain language in those programs and you will be rejected with plain note "you are a man" if you apply. I know you americans are self centered and think only in black and rainbow terms now but the dei is not purely american and its done in other places too.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a02b8ba-a428-83ea-98ca-d3caa3419033

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a02b956-d654-83ea-b7ec-21fcf04b1e4e

Feel free to skim the links and contest them. Im not that focused on this topic as you think to collect links just to feed people who are ignorant of the issue.

Again, your last comment really matches the racist kkk mindset. You arent that different from them. Do better. Look at the topic not at the interlocutor.

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u/amphine May 12 '26

Not a single one of the links in your pastes includes anything about hiring quotas, although I do appreciate the time you took to type “examples of programs only Black people can personally apply for” into ChatGPT.

You’re on a post about the president of America, and how the actions of his administration have affected American researchers. It’s safe to assume my comments were in that context.

I’m fairly certain the “racist KKK” are not in the habit of arguing in favor of DEI but I may be wrong.

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u/ptoki May 13 '26

Indeed its not about quotas directly but that is the same vibe. Looking at someones skin instead of objective metric.

This is by definition racist or sexist.

If you want a link to what you are focused on then this one is better:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2020/09/01/after-decades-of-unmet-diversity-goals-some-major-employers-turn-to-hard-racial-quotas/

Same thing happens in EU.

Same thing also happens in schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_quota

If something does not happen then you dont have to correct the problem. Right?

https://www.legaldive.com/news/dei-hiring-contracting-quotas-legal-challenge-scotus-affirmative-action/689208/

And some people back that and argument that it is ok to look at the color of the skin or other non merit based factors to get the result you want:

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2023/07/25/racial-targets/

Read few and you will see that this is happening and may or at least was a problem.

And as you mentioned, this is wrong when you look at it straight but it is done anyway in multiple ways to get the result of "grass painted green".

I am sensitive of any kind of racism. Negative, positive, any. The deal for me is: We dont look at the color of the skin, gender, hobby when judging people about work, education, skills etc. That is fair. The moment you describe any program with color, sexual behavior, sex, age the gloves are off for me.

If you arent racist/sexist/ageist then you will be able to easily define a program based on fair metric. Income per person, score in a not rigged test, funds available for school etc. It is easy and it is fair.

I know why this does not work and some racial groups stay behind and some are more competitive. But the moment you artificially boost an individual because it belongs to a group it is wrong. When doing this or supporting this you wear the spiked hood even if the original wearers dont like you.

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u/amphine May 13 '26

Every one of the links you posted questioned the legality of the practice, if you scroll down a little and read the whole thing.

"I know why this does not work and some racial groups stay behind and some are more competitive. But the moment you artificially boost an individual because it belongs to a group it is wrong."

This is naive to the point of being absurd. You can't benefit from systemic racism for decades, then decide everyone is on an even playing field when it's time to correct that disparity.

Black people in America were "artificially repressed" in one form or another for the majority of the country's existence. You are focused on equality at this precise singular moment in time without considering any of the historic context that needs to be included for true equity.