An NIH Shutdown Hiring Spree?

According to job postings published Friday, the NIH is seeking to fill eight high-level positions, including six Director-level roles, by November 21st, despite the hiring spree coming in the midst of the longest US government shutdown in history.

This is exceptional for a few reasons — the short timeframe for applicants to respond; the number of roles being jammed into the same two weeks; and, the fact that it is coming when government employees aren’t available to do the work.

The jobs posted are:

• Director, National Institute of Mental Health
• Chief Executive Officer, Clinical Center
• Deputy Director for Intramural Research
• Director, National Institute of General Medical Sciences
• Director, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research
• Director, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
• Director, National Library of Medicine
• Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

The one that concerns us the most is the Director of the NLM, a role currently filled on an interim basis by Stephen Sherry, who is also the interim Director of the NCBI. You might recall he was slotted into this role after SPARC’s inappropriate role on an NIH Search Committee was revealed — things went quiet, and Sherry was recalled to sit at the desk again.

With cronyism already rampant in the Trump Administration, speculation that these job postings are merely performative is already percolating.

Who will the new head of the NLM be? We may know soon.

But will we be thankful?

Or will it be another turkey?