PETA Scientists Reveal NIH Stacks Deck Against Non-Animal Experiments in Grant Funding

For Immediate Release:
March 3, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA neuroscientists, in an analysis just released, reveal that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) committees reviewing requests for grant money for research are stacked with animal experimenters, which is one reason that so much money goes to experiments on animals.

In the first-of-its-kind study, “Predominance of animal-based expertise may bias NIH neuroscience grant review: A pilot study with implications for non-animal methodologies,” PETA’s Dr. Emily Trunnell and Dr. Katherine Roe show that NIH review groups tasked with evaluating basic neuroscience research proposals are primarily composed of individuals who conduct experiments on animals.

The study also demonstrates that having more animal experimenters in these review groups correlated with more funding for experiments on animals and less funding for non-animal research proposals. Of the 562 neuroscience grants funded by NIH during an eight-month window, 72 percent planned to use animals. Studies using non-animal methods alone or in combination with human studies accounted for just 8 percent of agency funding for basic neuroscience research. The remainder proposed both animal and non-animal methods.

During the funding window analyzed, these review groups awarded a whopping $246,193,068 (83 percent of the funding in this data set) for grants that included animal experiments but only $48,452,579 (8 percent) to projects with no animal experimentation component.

“Letting those stuck in the dark ages hold the purse strings props up a failed system and prevents cutting-edge research from getting off the ground,” says Dr. Trunnell. “PETA calls on NIH to level the playing field by addressing this funding bias and investing in modern, human-relevant research.”

The bias toward experiments on animals harms early-career researchers who may abandon non-animal methods due to the difficulty of receiving federal funds for those projects. For many neuroscientists, it may seem the only way to obtain funding and get ahead in their careers is to experiment on animals, although studies show that 90% of all basic research—most of which involves animals—fails to lead to treatments for humans.

To mitigate this bias, Dr. Trunnell and Dr. Roe recommend that NIH and other research funders conduct internal reviews assessing bias, bolster non-animal methods expertise in reviewer pools, and create non-animal methods-specific funding streams, among other steps.

PETA scientists’ Research Modernization NOW proposal provides a comprehensive strategy for replacing experiments on animals with superior methods.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.