CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: list of nih grants cancelled

  • Is Grants.gov Legit? Checking UKRI & NIH Grants

    Is grants.gov legit? Yes — Grants.gov is the official U.S. federal portal for grant opportunities, managed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and used to post funding opportunity announcements from more than two dozen federal agencies. It never charges a fee and never cold-calls applicants; any solicitation that does — whether it names Grants.gov, NIH or UKRI — is impersonating a real funder.

    Grants.gov is the single federal system through which U.S. government agencies publish funding opportunity announcements and accept electronic grant applications. This distinction matters because scam operators increasingly clone that legitimacy, sending fake “award notification” emails and fabricated solicitations that mimic UKRI, NIH and Grants.gov branding to target early-career researchers who are unfamiliar with how genuine funders actually communicate.

    Is Grants.gov legitimate? What the official record shows

    Grants.gov is a genuine, government-operated system, not a third-party listing site. It was launched under the E-Government Act of 2002 and has operated as the unified application point for federal grant-making agencies since 2003, with HHS acting as the managing partner agency. It consolidates funding opportunity announcements that previously had to be found agency by agency.

    A meaningful, under-reported change also affects biomedical researchers directly. As of October 2025, Grants.gov became the single official source for NIH grant opportunities, replacing the parallel posting arrangement researchers had relied on for years. Applicants should treat any NIH solicitation that routes around Grants.gov, or asks for a separate “processing” step outside it, with immediate suspicion.

    • The domain always ends in .gov, with a valid HTTPS certificate.
    • There is no fee to search, register for, or apply to a federal grant.
    • Every genuine opportunity carries an Assistance Listing Number that can be cross-checked on the portal itself.
    • Grants.gov does not initiate unsolicited calls, texts or emails asking for personal or banking details.

    How fraudsters impersonate UKRI, NIH and Grants.gov

    The Federal Trade Commission’s March 2026 consumer alert sets out five common signs of a fake government grant scam, built on complaint data from applicants who were contacted “out of the blue” and told they had been randomly selected for free money. Genuine federal grants are never awarded without a submitted, reviewed application.

    HHS’s own fraud-alert page describes a recurring scheme in which callers pose as HHS or Grants.gov officials, tell the target they qualify for a grant, and then request an upfront fee, gift cards or cryptocurrency to “release” the funds. UKRI-branded scams follow the same template adapted for a UK audience: fraudulent emails referencing a real UKRI council name, directing recipients to a lookalike domain that is not ukri.org, and asking for a processing payment before a fictitious grant can be paid out.

    The “free government grants uk” search pattern reflects a genuine confusion point: there is no UK equivalent of a walk-in “free grants.gov” cash scheme for personal expenses. UKRI funding is competitive, project-based, and administered through an applicant’s host institution — not paid directly to individuals who respond to an unsolicited message.

    Verification checklist: confirming a genuine funding opportunity

    Research offices supporting early-career researchers should apply this sequence before treating any funding contact as genuine, regardless of which funder is named.

    1. Check the domain independently. Do not click through the email; type grants.gov, nih.gov or ukri.org directly into the browser and search for the opportunity there.
    2. Match the reference number. Confirm the Assistance Listing Number (Grants.gov) or funding opportunity code against the official listing, not the number quoted in the message.
    3. Verify the named contact. Look up the programme officer or UKRI programme manager in the agency’s own staff directory — never use the phone number or reply-to address in the unsolicited email.
    4. Treat any fee request as disqualifying. Genuine funders never ask for payment, gift cards or cryptocurrency to “release,” “process” or “insure” a grant.
    5. Confirm institutional eligibility. Federal and UKRI grants are awarded to eligible organisations and named investigators under published eligibility rules, not to individuals responding cold to an email.
    6. Report suspected scams. In the US, file with the FTC at consumer.ftc.gov; in the UK, report to Action Fraud and notify UKRI directly.

    UKRI, NIH and Grants.gov: comparing verification channels

    Research administrators frequently support applicants across both UK and US funding systems, yet most existing scam-awareness guidance is written for a single jurisdiction. The table below maps the equivalent verification channel in each system.

    Funder system Official portal Fee for a genuine grant Primary verification step Report a suspected scam
    US federal grants grants.gov (managed by HHS) None Match the Assistance Listing Number; contact the listed federal program officer directly FTC (consumer.ftc.gov)
    NIH specifically grants.gov (single source since Oct 2025) plus the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts None Cross-check the NIH Guide subscription and RePORT database entries FTC; NIH Office of Extramural Research
    UKRI (UK) ukri.org Funding Finder None Verify the named UKRI programme manager via ukri.org staff contacts Action Fraud; UKRI directly

    Grant scam questions researchers ask

    Do you pay back government grants?

    No. A genuine federal or UKRI research grant is not a loan and does not need to be repaid, provided the recipient meets the terms of the award. This is precisely why fraudsters exploit the word “grant” — it implies free money, which scammers use to justify upfront “processing” fee requests that legitimate funders never make.

    How do I know if a grant is legitimate?

    A legitimate grant appears on the funder’s own official portal — Grants.gov, ukri.org or the relevant agency site — under a matching Assistance Listing Number or funding reference. It requires a submitted application reviewed against published criteria, involves no upfront payment, and is confirmed only through contacts you look up independently, not numbers supplied in the offer itself.

    Is the DHHS grant real or fake?

    An unsolicited call or email claiming you have been awarded a Department of Health and Human Services grant, especially one requesting a fee or personal financial details, is almost certainly fake. HHS confirms it does not make unsolicited outreach offering grants, and any genuine HHS-funded opportunity is listed on Grants.gov under a verifiable reference number.

    Is the federal government giving out grants?

    Yes, but only through a competitive application process managed by named federal agencies and posted on Grants.gov, never through random selection or direct personal payouts. Federal agencies do not post individual “personal expense” grants on Grants.gov; offers of that kind, often directing applicants to USA.gov-lookalike sites, are the clearest scam signal to watch for.

    What this means for research offices

    The practical risk sits with early-career researchers who have not yet learned how genuine funders actually communicate, and who are most likely to trust an official-sounding email referencing a real council or institute name. Research offices should build the verification checklist above into onboarding materials and pre-award workflows, alongside existing research-integrity training, rather than treating funding fraud as a separate awareness topic bolted onto general phishing guidance.

    As NIH consolidates onto Grants.gov and UKRI continues to centralise its Funding Finder tool, the practical advice converges: verify independently on the official portal, never through a link in an unsolicited message, and treat any fee request as an immediate disqualifier. Institutions that fold this into standard research administration due diligence will do more to protect early-career researchers than any single scam-alert email can achieve on its own.

  • NIH Grant Terminations in 2026: What Was Cancelled, What Was Restored, and Why

    What happened: the 2025-2026 NIH termination wave

    Beginning in March 2025, the National Institutes of Health cancelled thousands of active research awards in one of the largest disruptions to federal biomedical funding in decades. A peer-reviewed analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2026 counted 2,291 active NIH research grants terminated in the initial wave, withdrawing an estimated $2.45 billion in committed funding. NIH grant terminations continued through the spring, and by late May 2025 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers tracking the cuts put the cumulative total at roughly 2,100 grants worth approximately $9.5 billion.

    Independent counts diverged because institutions and awarding offices reported figures at different points in a fast-moving process. The Association of American Medical Colleges recorded 777 terminated grants representing $1.9 billion as of 5 May 2025, while an implementation-science analysis published in PubMed Central counted 702 terminations as of 5 April 2025. The variance reflects the pace of the cuts rather than disagreement about their occurrence.

    Which grants and research topics were targeted

    Termination notices sent to grantees cited a shift in agency funding priorities away from topics the administration characterised as “unscientific” or as promoting discrimination. Research areas disproportionately affected included:

    • LGBT+ health and gender-identity research
    • Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the biomedical workforce
    • Vaccine hesitancy and confidence studies
    • Health equity and racial health-disparities research
    • Climate change and environmental-health research

    Reporting by Applied Clinical Trials Online found that 20% of terminated grants were early-career training awards, a category central to sustaining the biomedical research pipeline. A subsequent analysis found the cuts fell disproportionately on Black, Indigenous, and other minority researchers, as well as investigators from sexual and gender-minority communities — a pattern that later became central to the legal challenges against the terminations.

    Court-ordered restorations: the timeline

    Multiple lawsuits challenged the terminations as procedurally unlawful and discriminatory. The table below summarises the major rulings tracked through mid-2026.

    Date Ruling / event Outcome
    16 June 2025 Judge William Young (D. Mass.), APHA v. NIH Ordered NIH to restore 367 grants worth nearly $3.8 billion; found the termination process “arbitrary and capricious” and discriminatory toward LGBTQ-related research
    25 June 2025 NIH response to court order NIH ceased issuing new terminations of “politically sensitive” grants while the ruling was contested
    August 2025 Federal court order, UCLA class action Ordered restoration of NSF grants suspended at UCLA from 1 August 2025
    September 2025 Federal court order, UCLA Ordered restoration of NIH funding suspended at UCLA from 31 July 2025; NIH reinstated the awards
    May 2026 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Upheld reinstatement of grants terminated under DEI- and environmental-justice-related executive orders, the first major appellate ruling on the issue

    The Department of Health and Human Services has pursued appeals against several of these rulings, so the restoration list is not static. Institutions should treat any given month’s figures as a snapshot rather than a final count.

    Answer-first: common questions about NIH grant terminations

    How many NIH grants have been terminated?

    Counts vary by source and date because the terminations rolled out over several months. Published figures range from 702 grants in early April 2025 to 2,291 grants worth $2.45 billion in the fullest peer-reviewed accounting, published in PNAS in 2026.

    Have any terminated NIH grants been restored?

    Yes. A federal judge ordered 367 grants restored in June 2025 following the APHA v. NIH ruling, and separate court orders restored NIH and NSF funding to UCLA researchers later that year. In May 2026 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld further reinstatements.

    How can a research office check if a specific NIH grant was terminated?

    Research offices should cross-check award numbers against NIH RePORTER, the HHS TAGGS terminated-grants list, and USASpending.gov, then corroborate against the crowdsourced Grant Watch database, which aggregates termination notices submitted directly by affected principal investigators.

    What is the Grant Watch database?

    Grant Watch is an independent tracker built by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researcher Scott Delaney and computational researcher Noam Ross, combining government data with crowdsourced submissions to document NIH and NSF grant terminations that agency reporting has not consistently disclosed.

    Monitoring exposure: RePORTER, TAGGS, and tracker databases

    For sponsored-programmes offices, the operational question is not just what happened nationally but which of an institution’s own awards are exposed. No single federal system currently gives a real-time, authoritative picture of terminations and restorations together, so offices need to triangulate across sources.

    Tool Custodian Best for
    NIH RePORTER National Institutes of Health Authoritative award status, PI, institution, and funding history lookups
    HHS TAGGS (terminated-grants list) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Official, periodically updated PDF/CSV of terminated HHS awards by agency
    USASpending.gov U.S. Treasury / OMB Government-wide obligation and de-obligation records across all federal awards
    Grant Watch Independent researcher-run project Early, crowdsourced signal on terminations before official lists update

    A practical monitoring routine for a research office includes:

    1. Reconcile the institution’s active award list against NIH RePORTER monthly, flagging any status changes.
    2. Cross-check flagged awards against the HHS TAGGS terminated-grants file for confirmation of formal termination.
    3. Monitor Grant Watch and institutional legal counsel updates for early warning and litigation status, since court-ordered restorations can lag or precede official RePORTER updates.
    4. Maintain a standing register of affected PIs so restoration notices — which are sometimes issued quietly — are not missed.

    Because restorations have followed litigation rather than routine agency process, research offices that rely solely on award letters risk missing reinstatements that require the institution to formally re-accept funding within a compliance window. Building this monitoring into research administration workflows, rather than treating it as a one-off compliance exercise, is now a standing requirement for institutions with federally funded portfolios.

    Implications for institutions, PIs, and research offices

    The termination-and-restoration cycle has practical consequences beyond the immediate funding gap. Institutions have had to decide whether to bridge-fund affected projects, hold staff and data-collection activities in limbo, or wind down studies that may later be reinstated. Early-career researchers, who held a disproportionate share of terminated training awards, face particular career risk from even temporary funding gaps.

    The pattern of litigation-driven reinstatement also means compliance offices cannot treat a termination notice as final without checking litigation status — a departure from how terminations were historically administered. As appellate rulings such as the May 2026 Ninth Circuit decision accumulate, research offices should expect further reinstatements to arrive on a rolling basis rather than as a single resolution, making ongoing monitoring — not a one-time audit — the operationally necessary posture through the remainder of 2026.