An analysis of language used in grants awarded this year by the U.S. National Institutes of Health suggests that researchers are less likely now than previously to consider study participants' ethnic, racial and gender diversity – or less likely to admit in writing that they plan to do so.
The change is likely due to executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion-related funding and requiring agencies to "terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all . . . 'equity-related' grants or contracts," the researchers said.
Indeed, medical researchers not involved in the new study told Reuters earlier this year that they have been self-censoring their use of equity, diversity and inclusion language to increase their odds of receiving grants. Others have said they were instructed by NIH officials to strike such language from their applications.
To evaluate the issue, researchers at Harvard Medical School analyzed the abstracts, or summaries, of 17,701 grants awarded by the NIH in 2024 and 2025.
The rate of words reflecting diversity language – such as "Native American," "gender," "ethnicity," and "sexual orientation" - decreased 25% between January 2024 and June 2025, the researchers reported in The BMJ.
Analyzing 1,967 pairs of the same grants in 2024 and 2025, in order to examine changes in language within the same research project, they found that words reflecting diversity language were deleted from grant abstracts at a 10-fold higher rate than other words in 2025.
The findings are "consistent with anecdotal evidence that researchers have modified language to prevent grant abstracts from being flagged for governmental review, suggesting a limitation on researchers' ability to freely use specific terms in federal research grants," the researchers said.
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