Fact Check, Part 5: Continued Leadership Vacuum at NIH with the Continued Absence of Institute and Center Directors
Bhattacharya fails to meet his promise to hire Leaders within the month
“You’re going to start seeing people being hired starting actually this month and moving forward.”
—Jay Bhattacharya, on hiring NIH Institute and Center Directors
Overview
Of the 27 institutes at the NIH, 13 currently lack a director. This leadership vacuum was largely created by the administration when they forced out many well-respected and successful NIH directors. During the March 17 hearing, Bhattacharya committed to directors being hired “within the month.” At the time this fact check was published on the 27 UNIHTED website, nearly two months later, all 16 positions remained unfilled. Today, 13 remain unfilled. In the three months since this hearing, only three directors have been announced. At this rate, it will take more than a year to fill all open Director positions.
What Bhattacharya said
In response to Representative Hoyer:
“I have put in a process as rapidly as possible while still having a scientist lead the way and identifying the next directors, a process to hire in each of those slots. You’re going to start seeing people being hired starting actually this month and moving forward. The key to me is making sure that it’s really scientific merit and leadership ability that determines who those directors are going to be... We have external groups. We heard from you all about the external groups being involved in that process.”
In response to Representative Bice:
“When the interviews reach my level, they’ve gone through this long process of scientific vetting. Normally, that takes years. We’ve accelerated it. Scientists across the NIH, especially leaders of the NIH, have identified the best candidates.”
In response to Representative Dean:
“For the NIH hiring process, it is science first. It’s scientists at the institutes that are doing the first level of interviewing. It’s along with external groups. It’s career scientists at the office of director that’s doing the second level screening, and I’m doing the third level of screening.”
What’s actually happening
NIH did not hire any IC Directors in the month of March. Nor in the one month period from March 17 to April 17. Bhattacharya also asserts that “scientific merit and leadership ability that determines” selection of Institute and Center Directors and that external groups are involved in the hiring process, but this was almost certainly not the case for the new Director of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Kyle Walsh, who is relatively unknown in the field of environmental health but also happens to be a good friend and former roommate of Vice President JD Vance. NIH staff involved in the hiring process report that no external committees have been involved, and instead committees only include internal NIH scientists including remaining institute directors. It is also hard to believe that Institute Directors are being allowed to lead the charge, or even feel safe to give their honest opinions, given that past Institute Directors have been fired for disagreeing with NIH political leadership. Importantly, Bhattacharya participated in creating the leadership vacuum, as several directors have been removed or not renewed during his tenure.
What you can do
Stay informed!
Read the full fact check on the 27UNIHTED website.
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Look out for the next post in our fact check series on challenges facing the next generation of scientists.
Inform others! Share this post with your colleagues.
Call your members of Congress and urge them to enact protections for NIH, including stopping the discriminatory censorship of grants and applications at NIH
About this Blog Series
Through this blog series, recent and current NIH staff (in our personal capacities) are fighting for scientific integrity at the NIH, so science can continue to yield future treatments for our fellow Americans. In these blogs, we are highlighting when Bhattacharya flagrantly mischaracterized, obfuscated, or just plain lied about the state of NIH under oath to members of Congress during the March 17 House Appropriations Committee hearing.
In case you missed it, we recently covered NIH’s ability to spend 2026 funds, the harmful consequences of the rapid transition to multiyear funding, how discriminatory censorship of NIH grants is excluding many Americans from the benefits of science, and political interference at the National Institutes of Health.
Back in Februray, I spoke with the former CMO of NCATS, NIH. Towards the end of the interview, he was quite candid about why he left. It is worth a listening or watch. It was heartbreaking.