NIH director advances a ‘second scientific revolution’ while aligning with MAHA activists

Jay Bhattacharya used a high-profile appearance at a MAHA Institute event to outline an agenda he described as a 'second scientific revolution,' advocating stronger incentives for reproducibility, publication of negative results, and a two-plus-three grant structure to seed riskier early-stage research before committing to longer-term funding. The setting blended agency leadership with activists who promote nonstandard and frequently discredited medical claims, producing a political theater that blurred advocacy with the trappings of scientific leadership. Some of the concrete proposals — valuing replication and creating staged exploratory grants — respond to widely acknowledged weaknesses in how research is rewarded and funded. Yet those technical proposals were framed inside rhetoric that frequently conflated methodological reform with policy grievances from the pandemic, producing logical gaps that undercut their persuasive force. The appearance coincided with broader, rapid leadership reordering at NIH: shortened or suspended open searches, an uptick in political appointees, and several senior directors placed on leave or removed, according to agency sources. Those personnel moves, and the sidelining of external review committees in some searches, increase the operational risk that programmatic continuity and institutional memory will erode just as the agency considers deep changes to funding rules. Congressional actors have already pushed back in appropriations guidance and draft proposals aimed at protecting independent searches and capping political hires, reflecting an intensifying tug-of-war over how the agency will be run. Bhattacharya framed some reforms as remedies for perceived cultural problems — risk aversion and insufficient support for early-career investigators — but provided few implementation details or safeguards to prevent political priorities from shaping award decisions. Public assurances that research budgets were not broadly cut conflict with independent analyses showing reductions in specific program areas, widening a credibility gap that could further alienate mainstream researchers. The net result is a split trajectory: there are plausible, useful reforms on the table, but they are being advanced at a moment when institutional safeguards and hiring practices are in flux, increasing the likelihood that programmatic choices will track political preferences rather than peer-reviewed scientific need.