Let us say that TPM Readers are almost unimaginably over-represented in the country’s colleges and universities, and perhaps even more so in the research arms, which are of course primarily in the sciences and medical research fields. So we’re getting quite a lot of you writing in with various details and context for this new NIH directive that went into effect overnight which drastically reduces federal support for university research arms and academic medical centers. I’m going to be publishing more of them but I wanted to start with this one from TPM Reader RM …

The Post has a good piece up about all the hidden ways the Trump White House is trying to break different parts of the government — through non-payment of grants (different from cancelations), arbitrary limits on purchase authority, etc. They note something very similar to the funds-ghosting I’ve reported on at the National Institutes of Health, only here with the EPA.

Here’s the key passage that TPM Reader SS flagged to my attention …

Major news out of NIH tonight, which I’m told will have a dramatic impact on all academic medical centers and research universities generally. Anyone familiar with the sciences knows that scientists bring in grant money for various research projects and the grant money is split between the grantee, who might be a researcher or a lab, etc., and the host institution. So the hospital or the university, etc. The new directive limits what goes to the institution for “indirect costs” to 15%. I don’t know this area well enough to get into the precise rationales for which rates make the most sense in the abstract. But that’s not really the point. From what I can tell this directive slashes the kind of government research funding available to these institution by as much as 60% or 70%. (I want to keep those percentages vague because this isn’t my area but I think that captures at least the general scale.) So these sound like huge budget shortfalls for academic research institutions, academic medical centers and so forth. And this is above and beyond the “freezes” that are still mostly in effect, albeit in many cases unofficially.

At present, my main contribution to Lab Leak Discourse is making fun of it. I say this operating on the distinction provided to us by TPM Reader JS a couple weeks ago, noting that Lab Leak Discourse is now entirely autonomous from the actual ongoing research into the origins of COVID-19. Indeed, I noticed yesterday that it has now taken a new turn focusing on public opinion surveys showing that a majority of Americans believe COVID began with a laboratory accident at the virology lab in Wuhan, China. The “wisdom of crowds,” one Lab Leak advocate told me, should be given its own weight along with the judgments of those with domain expertise in virology, genomics and other fields.

From TPM Reader CR …

You got good advice from readers in your Lab Leak posts #1 – #3. The last one, not so much.

I do think it could be significant that the lab leak nonsense is surfacing in the same week as rather hawkish Congressional hearings and some weapon-rattling by usual suspects, but in a different way than correspondent #4. Namely, that the hawkish faction wants to stir things up, and Lab Leak is one of their tools. Is it possible that Chris Wray is just a little bit hawkish? Hm?