Introduction

Noam Ross from rOpenSci and Scott Delaney from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have compiled two excellent datasets on terminated NIH and NSF grants .

Using the flagged keywords dictionary from the dataset on terminated NIH grants, I conducted frequency analyses of keywords in the terminated grants.

Flagged Keywords

The Grant Watch team has the following explanation about the flagged words:

NIH grant records contain a flagged_words field. Terms in this field are those that appear in the the grant’s title, abstract, or public health relevance statement and match a list of words the the administration has reportedly used to identify grants for termination. The full list of words is drawn from this New York Times article and supplemented with variants of the words “vaccine”, “hesitancy”, and “mRNA”. We do not know specifically whether these words are used to classify grants for termination, but include them for further analysis. Some flagged words (e.g., “bias” or “trans”) have multiple meanings in scientific literature, and may be matched to parts of words (e.g., “transcription”).

I only added “critical,” “evolution,” and “Darwin” as additional keywords to the NIH flagged keywords. I also used the same keywords for the NSF dataset. You can suggest more flagged keywords by sending me an email.

The list of the flagged keywords is as follows: institutional, trans, inequities, marginalize, marginalized, racial, socioeconomic, underrepresented, underserved, barrier, barriers, bipoc, black, historically, minority, vaccine, vaccines, diverse, inclusion, mental health, at risk, female, gender, key populations, men who have sex with men, msm, political, sex, sociocultural, transgender, disability, trauma, diversity, equity, minorities, women, disparity, expression, females, bias, equitable, health equity, ethnicity, race, discrimination, immigrants, latinx, culturally appropriate, privilege, pronoun, belong, systemic, biased, diverse backgrounds, identity, intersectional, intersectionality, racism, vulnerable populations, mrna, vaccination, status, orientation, biases, equality, inequality, increase diversity, inequalities, injustice, polarization, inequity, racially, traumatic, segregation, assigned male at birth, lgbt, lgbtq, victim, person-centered, person-centered care, health disparity, stereotype, discriminatory, sexuality, dei, accessible, systemically, excluded, diverse group, pollution, disabilities, assigned female at birth, pregnant person, pregnant persons, inequitable, diversified, gender identity, activism, advocate, nonbinary, most risk, diverse community, oppression, affirming care, gender-affirming care, prejudice, underappreciated, diversify, inclusivity, racial justice, victims, enhancing diversity, social justice, hesitant, racial inequality, promote diversity, climate science, assigned at birth, hesitancy, vaccinate, non-binary, tribal, promoting diversity, inclusive, advocacy, community diversity, underrepresentation, implicit bias, advocates, race and ethnicity, genders, native american, diverse communities, stereotypes, culturally responsive, exclusion, diverse groups, diversifying, mx, discriminated, indigenous community, anti-racism, deia, gender diversity, climate crisis, unconscious bias, pregnant people, racial identity, implicit biases, multicultural, racial diversity, increase the diversity, oppressive, sense of belonging, women and underrepresented, inclusiveness, gbv, hate speech, enhance the diversity, cultural competence, undervalued, fostering inclusivity, underprivileged, pronouns, cultural differences, cultural sensitivity, allyship, critical, evolution, Darwin

Here are the results for only May 2025 terminations, which shows more focus on certain keywords (in particular, “expression”) than others especially in terminated NIH grants.