{"id":22665,"date":"2025-02-22T09:01:38","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T10:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22665"},"modified":"2025-02-22T10:24:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T10:24:55","slug":"accessibility-is-taking-a-hit-across-the-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22665","title":{"rendered":"Accessibility Is Taking a Hit Across the Sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Confusion has ensued about the future of programs and research supporting people with disabilities as a result of President Trump\u2019s executive order.<\/p>\n

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Tyler Nelson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, studies the neurobiology of pain, a choice partly motivated by his own frustrations with a neuromuscular disability. Last October, he applied for a grant at the National Institutes of Health that, if awarded, would support his dream of someday running his own lab.<\/p>\n

But, earlier in February, he learned that his application, which took six months to pull together, was about to be thrown out.<\/p>\n

The reason: Dr. Nelson had applied for a version of the award<\/a> that supports researchers who are historically underrepresented in science, including people with disabilities. That funding avenue now violates President Trump\u2019s executive order<\/a> banning federal agencies from activities related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, or D.E.I.A.<\/p>\n

Dr. Nelson was tipped off by an N.I.H. affiliate, but he has received no official notice about the situation. \u201cI\u2019ve tried to call probably 150 times,\u201d he said. Unofficially, he learned that the agency was planning to pull his submission altogether rather than move it to the general award pool for consideration. This has happened with at least one other type of award<\/a> offered by the agency, which did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Thanks to the tip, Dr. Nelson was able to withdraw his application and resubmit it to the general award pool before its deadline \u2014 but he is unsure if others were so lucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this does is discriminate against people who are underrepresented,\u201d said an N.I.H. reviewer who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. The reviewer added that the evaluation criteria for the general and diversity award pools were the same, with no priority given to either pool. \u201cI can\u2019t stress enough,\u201d the reviewer said, that an undeserving grant \u201cis not going to get funded, whether it\u2019s \u2018diversity\u2019 or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Confusion has ensued about the future of programs and research supporting people with disabilities as a result of President Trump\u2019s executive order.Tyler Nelson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, studies the neurobiology of pain, a choice partly motivated by his own frustrations with a neuromuscular disability. Last October, he applied for a grant at the National Institutes of Health that, if awarded, would support his dream of someday running his own lab.But, earlier in February, he learned that his application, which took six months to pull together, was about to be thrown out.The reason: Dr. Nelson had applied for a version of the award that supports researchers who are historically underrepresented in science, including people with disabilities. That funding avenue now violates President Trump\u2019s executive order banning federal agencies from activities related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, or D.E.I.A.Dr. Nelson was tipped off by an N.I.H. affiliate, but he has received no official notice about the situation. \u201cI\u2019ve tried to call probably 150 times,\u201d he said. Unofficially, he learned that the agency was planning to pull his submission altogether rather than move it to the general award pool for consideration. This has happened with at least one other type of award offered by the agency, which did not respond to a request for comment.Thanks to the tip, Dr. Nelson was able to withdraw his application and resubmit it to the general award pool before its deadline \u2014 but he is unsure if others were so lucky.\u201cWhat this does is discriminate against people who are underrepresented,\u201d said an N.I.H. reviewer who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. The reviewer added that the evaluation criteria for the general and diversity award pools were the same, with no priority given to either pool. \u201cI can\u2019t stress enough,\u201d the reviewer said, that an undeserving grant \u201cis not going to get funded, whether it\u2019s \u2018diversity\u2019 or not.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22667,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22665"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22668,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22665\/revisions\/22668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}