This is simply factually wrong. The twitter-engagement-bait driven nonsense like the OP in the tweet you linked is just so bad. I only got flagged about this when talking with an acquaintance working on medical research under NIH grants in the US. (I'm not from the US)
What has actually happened is adjustment of what they call the "indirect cost rate". This refers to the portion of funding you're allowed to chalk down to administrative overhead as opposed to direct research expenses.
For example in 2023, of the 35billion in NIH grants, 9billion went to administrative overhead (25%).
The new rule is them capping this to 15%. By the way this rate is around the standard in all private grant foundations.
Here is the primary source of information:
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-0...
Now, I'm not sure if all the DEI stuff the new government doesn't like comes under "administrative overhead". If it did, it would explain the timing of the announcement. But adjusting indirect cost rates is in general a very normal thing to do, and 25% is very high, even for a prosperous grant system like the NIH.
Here [2] is a university mentioning their negotiated indirect cost rate of 56%(!!!)
For comparison, the NSF from 2010 to 2016 varied their rate only between 16% and 24% [3]. The NIH rates are absurdly high.
News articles such as [1], that directly quote the above primary source and still misconstrue it, deserve jail time.
Also, it is really disingenous to say "cutting funds for cancer research" as if it's directly targeted at cancer research.
Engagement driven media like Twitter, news websites, etc, are truly the devil of the world. And the incentives are rotten, so no matter what Musk says X isn't fixing it in any way.
</rant>
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-bi...
[2] https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-...
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