ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
How the 2025 NIH grant terminations varied by researchers' demographic groups.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Academics for Black Survival and Wellness: A Grassroots Intervention for Black Liberation and Anti-Racism Inside and Outside of Academia.Journal of community psychology · 2026Article
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- How the 2025 NIH grant terminations varied by researchers' demographic groups.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In early 2025, the NIH unexpectedly terminated 2,291 active research grants, withdrawing $2.45 billion and disrupting thousands of projects. While the economic magnitude of these cuts is known, less is understood about how they differed across researchers' demographic groups. Using an original dataset of publicly available records, we documented how cancelations varied by gender and career stage. Although cuts occurred across all regions and institution types, statistical patterns show that early-career investigators-assistant professors, postdoctoral scholars, trainees, and graduate students-were disproportionately affected, as were women. Women's projects were smaller on average, had a larger share of unspent funds at cancelation, and were more concentrated in training and transition awards. Although available data cannot determine downstream causal effects, NIH economic multipliers suggest a potentially large unrealized loss to the US research enterprise. These patterns highlight the vulnerability of early-career researchers and women to abrupt funding instability and underscore the need for sustained investment to protect the future scientific workforce.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.