NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {T} he United States is fiercely competing with Communist China in many fields, not the least of which is medical research. China seeks to supplant the U.S. as the global leader in everything from developing vaccines to curing diseases. Remarkably, the U.S. National Institutes of Health has boosted China for years, as Americans learned during the Covid-19 pandemic when it came out that the NIH funded research in Wuhan’s virus lab. Now the NIH has given China another gift by downplaying research excellence in favor of racial equity.
On October 19, the NIH announced a “simplified framework” for “research project grant applications.” Henceforth, when NIH reviewers consider funding a research project, they will no longer grade researchers’ expertise or their institutions’ resources. Instead, they will mark these criteria as “appropriate” or in need of improvement, providing significantly less of the detail that most bears on a project’s likelihood of success. Previously, numerical scores played a decisive role in determining whether a project got funding. Expertise and institutional resources are now the only part of the three-prong review process that does not have a numerical score.
The NIH suggested in 2022 that this change is key to “reducing bias.” Activists complain that the NIH primarily funds the most prestigious researchers, who tend to be white and at well-resourced institutions, which often have fewer researchers of color. A 2011 paper in Science found that white grant applicants were about twice as successful as black applicants, which activists see as proof of “systemic racism.”
This “simplified” approach is profoundly simplistic, ignoring the complex realities of medical research. Abandoning the grading system for expertise and institutional resources will inevitably lead to NIH funding of riskier bets, leading to more failed research projects and wasted taxpayer money.
Research projects are enormous undertakings, requiring years of work and significant investment. A researcher may have a creative proposal, but if they don’t have the infrastructure and support of a well-resourced institution, they’re much more likely to fail. The best institutions have sophisticated facilities and teams of experts who can provide the highly expensive and complex technology required for modern biomedical research. When research grants flow to institutions that have fewer of these advantages, it’s more likely that the funded project will be a dud.
The same insight applies to individual researchers. Most clinical scientists who secure an NIH grant have developed their expertise for an average of eight to twelve years after securing an advanced degree. They’ve typically worked in the laboratories of noted experts to gain that experience and the ability to carry through successful experiments. It makes sense to fund researchers with a track record of implementing highly complicated techniques and producing meaningful data. It does not make sense to fund researchers who may have conducted little research — a distinct possibility under the NIH’s new system.
Downplaying these critical factors will not advance America’s medical-research enterprise. The NIH should know that, but it’s bought the lie that skin color is essential to successful projects. This belief — and it is just that, a belief — is not supported by scientific evidence. Rather, it is driven by activists’ religious-like assertion that systemic racism is everywhere and can only be addressed through racial favoritism. The NIH seems to think that people “deserve” to get a grant because of their melanin, yet no such right exists. In fact, this “cure” will make it much harder to cure real diseases, by undermining the expertise on which medical progress depends.
The NIH has long been the world’s preeminent medical-research institution. It gained that reputation by fostering a highly competitive environment that elevated the brightest researchers and best projects. That’s why NIH funding has produced revolutionary advances, from gene therapy for hereditary diseases to immunotherapy for cancer.
That legacy is now at risk, as the NIH continues to work with China while undermining its own commitment to world-class research and medical breakthroughs. No one stands to lose more than the American people, whose health is shaped by this research. And no one stands to gain more than Communist China, which is not only reaping funding but laughing as the U.S. endangers its mantle of leadership in medical research.