The co-founder of the UK Metascience Unit, a joint initiative of the UK's science department and UK Research and Innovation launched in 2024, describes experiments run on live funding processes. Tests included appeals to social obligation in reviewer recruitment e-mails (no effect), distributed peer review among applicants (which sped up assessment by expanding the reviewer pool), and ongoing trials of staff desk rejection to screen out non-competitive applications before peer review.
nature.com
· 2026-10-30
A Nature reader column features an anonymous academic with over two decades of engineering research experience in Latin America, who reports repeated rejection from faculty positions in North America and Europe. A colleague who served on a hiring committee told the applicant that the deciding factor was the lack of principal-investigator grants from the destination country's national funding system, despite strong scientific credentials. Experts including ecologist César Marín and MetaDocencia co-director Laura Ación respond, confirming that national funding experience often functions as an unofficial hiring criterion.
nature.com
· 2026-10-14
A stopgap government funding bill passed by the House and expected to be signed by President Trump includes language, inserted by Senators Patty Murray and Susan Collins, that bars the Office of Management and Budget from enacting a rule letting political appointees decide which research grants get funded or canceled. The freeze only lasts until the funding measure expires on December 11, but it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support—90-6 in the Senate and 370-48 in the House.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-02
GoKawiil