A bit of professional disappointment since we were also tipped about this and were hoping to get on it tomorrow. (D’oh!) But the Washington Post beat us to it. The gist is what’s important. Eric Schnabel, the chief operating office of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — ground-zero of the Trump war on science research -— was fired and literally escorted off the premises yesterday apparently directing a hefty sole-source contract to a company which employs his wife. It seems Trish Duffy Schnabel often goes by her maiden name and he may have thought that was strong enough OpSec to get away with it.
Schnabel, a 25 year Army vet, had always raised concern and harrumphs within the non-toady echelon at NIH because he apparently had no scientific or biomedical background, despite science and biomedicine playing a rather large role in the NIH brief.
