Latest news with #ScottDelaney
Boston Globe
27-05-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
A Harvard scientist built a database of 2,100 NIH grant terminations. Then his own funding was cut.
Two scientists — Scott Delaney and Noam Ross — took it upon themselves to document the extent of NIH grant terminations. By combining government information with crowdsourced submissions, the pair have gathered what appears to be the most detailed, public accounting of projects halted by the world's largest funder of biomedical research. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'The community of affected scientists is really what drove this. That's really what created it. We wouldn't have been successful if folks weren't willing to step forward,' Delaney said. Most researchers are uncomfortable openly discussing political issues, he added. 'Yet they did, because they shared their information with us. They let us post it publicly online for everybody to see, and many of them even stepped forward and started taking more prominent roles in advocacy, talking to lawmakers, to interest groups, to journalists.' Advertisement The Advertisement Now, Delaney himself has been swept up in the wave of grant cancellations because of the administration's targeting of funding for Harvard University. He is a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and all the grants supporting his research, which examines the ways that climate change can exacerbate Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's, were terminated this month. STAT spoke to Delaney last week about the impetus for Grant Watch, and the escalating battle between the Trump administration and Harvard. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Hearing you say that you study climate change-related health disparities feels like a lot of buzzwords that this current administration doesn't prioritize. When I say it's health disparities and it's climate change, that's jargon. What I'm really talking about is making sure that everybody has an equal opportunity to be well. So that's the health disparities piece. Some groups don't have an equal opportunity, and we can use more jargon, like socially marginalized, this, that, and the other. But the bottom line is not everybody has the same equal opportunity to be healthy because of the communities that they live in or based on where they live, based on laws. I don't think what I do, when I speak plainly, is controversial. I hope this isn't naive, but I don't think that trying to help folks with Alzheimer's be healthier, have better days, should engender controversy. One thing that we can do to ensure that we communicate what motivates us every day better is to stop using these weaponized words that weren't controversial but are now and just have a more kind of simplified conversation about why I get out of bed every day, why I sit down and analyze data every day, and why I write every day, Advertisement When did you have the idea for Grant Watch? At the very beginning of March, there were news stories that I had read that said the federal government was terminating a large number of NIH grants. As I read these stories, my first question was, 'Which grants?' You want to know that, especially because I don't necessarily trust everything the government says. I looked, and there wasn't much information. There were only a couple of folks that had been willing to go on their record and share their story. So there were only, you know, a few examples of grants that I could find. My first thought was, 'This is surely illegal,' but it's going to be really hard to file a lawsuit if we don't have a record of what's happened. We need details. Litigation, especially at the trial court, is fact-intensive. I put my lawyer hat back on, and I thought if there was a way that anybody was going to bring a lawsuit, or if there was a way that anybody was going to sort of organize any other kind of advocacy … we needed a common factual record, and that's why I started it. You mentioned litigation — what do you view as your goal in the next couple of months? Advertisement Right now, our core goal continues to be to curate a record. It's really important to document and establish what happened in the first place. I think that's especially important because the government has taken steps that obscure that record. Through the beginning of April, not so much anymore, the government was putting forth information about which grants it terminated. They stopped doing that. But for five or six weeks, they did do that. The only thing that they've done since then is updated the document … by removing grants that had been reinstated. So if there's a lawsuit, and there's an injunction in a particular lawsuit, and there's a court order that says 'reinstate this grant,' then what the government does is they comply, they reinstate the grant, but they remove it from any federal database and from any other record any indication that it was terminated in the first place. So unless you have our Last week, I assume, this became very personal for you, watching . Can you walk me through what last week was like for you? Last week was surreal for a couple of reasons. Because I've been tracking these grants, I have a front-row seat to everything that the NIH has been doing to science generally. That includes grant terminations. That also includes these grant freezes. So they've said in a couple of instances, we're freezing all the grants to specific universities. What they mean by that is that they stopped paying their bills. They stopped paying out money on grants. So if a scientist spent some money, either on salary or for supplies or for whatever it was, then they would submit that, basically an invoice to the government, usually on a monthly basis, and then the government would pay them. When they freeze payments, they stop those payments. Advertisement The federal government had already frozen payments on all NIH grants, as well as many other types of grants, to Harvard back in April. And the reason that that matters is that the terminations from last week, on some very practical level, didn't have a huge impact. Things were already frozen. It was always going to take a court order or a negotiated settlement, which probably wasn't going to come to undo the freeze. It's still going to take a court order or a negotiated settlement to undo the terminations. All the grants were terminated, but the request from Harvard [to scientists] is to continue doing the research as if the grants were not terminated. That's important, because if you stop doing that research, and then later the court orders the government to start paying its bills again, then you can't collect, right? You can't collect money for work you didn't do. So it's a very long way of underscoring that the practical impact of the terminations was limited, and yet they had a huge impact for a couple of reasons. The terminations felt like a much bigger deal, and a freeze always felt temporary, whereas the terminations felt in some sense final. Even though I know on some cognitive, intellectual level that there wasn't a huge impact, it shook me. I told my colleagues, I was like, I know this doesn't change much, and yet I'm gutted. I just had to take some, take some time away, get outside. On my colleagues, it had a really, really, really profound impact, and was extremely demoralizing. Advertisement But the other thing that it did was it sharpened people's response. During a freeze, it feels a little temporary. We're still kind of moving along as if things are going to be unfrozen, maybe we'll reach a settlement. It didn't have that finality. As a consequence, I don't think people were ready to stand up and fight, not like they are now. These grants are the manifestations of a life's worth of work. You terminate that and now everybody's ready to fight. It takes a minute, right? It takes getting knocked down. You get the wind knocked out of you. But then when you get up, you're ready to go, frankly, in a way that people weren't before.
Sunday World
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Sunday World
Far right activist Scott Delaney jailed in UK for drugs haul after years on the run
Delaney has become one of Ireland's most prominent far right influencers and has amassed thousands of followers on social media. Scott Delaney, also known as Scott Knight is an outspoken far-right supporter The convicted drug dealer and son of gangland killer 'Cotton Eye' Joe Delaney has been jailed for drug offences in the UK. Scott Delaney (50), who is also known as Scott Knight, was jailed for five years at Mold Crown Court in March after he was arrested in Holyhead while on his way back to Dublin. Delaney had been wanted on drug charges for more than 10 years after being found to have been producing cannabis at his then-address on Worsley Road North, Manchester in March and October of 2015. He had previously admitted two counts of producing cannabis, and possession of MDMA and cannabis but was only arrested in March of this year at the Port of Holyhead while returning home to Dublin from Manchester. In recent years, Delaney has been based in Dublin where he has become one of Ireland's most prominent far right influencers and has amassed thousands of followers on social media. Delaney (50), who claimed he was once the biggest ecstasy dealer in Dublin, has previously called on 'everyone who belongs to the Irish underworld' to join the far-right National Party in Ireland He played a leading role in the protest at the former Crown Paints warehouse on the Malahide Road claiming he doesn't want protection applicants being 'dumped around Irish women and children'. However, despite his concerns about immigrants causing crime in Ireland – a UK court heard in March how Delaney had himself been the target of an international policing operation. Scott Delaney (son of Cotten Eye Joe Delaney) It was revealed in court how Knight was stopped in France as he was approaching the Channel Tunnel border on March 15, 2015, and two assault rifles were found. While he was still in custody in France, the National Crime Agency executed a warrant at his address in Manchester on March 17. There they found 33 mature and 36 immature cannabis plants, as well as 48 seedlings, and evidence of a previously harvested crop. Described it as 'reasonably professional grow', with a potential yield of 5.6kg and a street value of up to £56,000, Knight told police he had been allowing a friend to grow cannabis there. Police also recovered a small amount of MDMA, in powder form, from his kitchen. Scott Delaney, also known as Scott Knight is an outspoken far-right supporter Delaney was initially remanded in custody in France before being bailed. Alerted to his release, officers searched his property again on October 7, 2015 where they found another cannabis grow, of 80 plants, with a potential yield of 2.5kg and a street value up to £25,000. Though Delaney was charged, he failed to attend court in December 2015 and remained on the run until being arrested. The North Wales Chronicle reports that Knight, who had five previous convictions for as many offences, was represented in court by Simon Mintz who said his client who has a career as a boxing trainer had been 'out of trouble' for the last 10 years. Mr Mintz said that in that time he had led a 'normal, productive life' with his family in Dublin, but Judge Rhys Rowlands told Delaney he had produced cannabis 'on a significant scale'. 'You've basically avoided the consequences of your behaviour for a period of some 10 years,' the judge told, him. Delaney, has been an outspoken supporter of the far-right movement and had previously ranted about how Ireland had been 'destroyed with heroin and crack cocaine — the genocide powder.' He has also already served time in prison for his part in the murder of Mark Dwyer, who was killed in 1996 over a stash of ecstasy. Dwyer was tied to a chair and beaten with iron bars for several hours after 40,000 ecstasy tablets had been stolen. Scott's father, Joe Delaney, had decided Dwyer was behind the theft and ordered that he be kidnapped and brought to him. Scott was later convicted of murder, but this was quashed on appeal, and he was sentenced to five years on a new charge of accessory to murder. His father, a notorious criminal figure in Dublin, was jailed for life for Dwyer's murder. In a 2022 interview on YouTube, Delaney described how he was one of the main ecstasy dealers in 1990s Dublin at the age of 22. In February last year, we published photos of Delaney, a strident supporter of the far-right movement which links immigrants to crime, taking a 'hit' from a pipe as innocent passers-by walked past him in Dublin's north inner city. In 2007, Delaney was also exposed as a fully paid-up member of the anti-Irish British National Party (BNP) after their membership details were leaked to the press Last year, Delaney appealed to Irish people to join the far-right National Party, claiming: 'The National Party is really the best choice we have for saving our country and our people. If everyone was to give support to the National Party, Ireland would be in a far, far better place. Scott Knight - also known as Scott Delaney 'No homelessness. No country destroyed with heroin and crack cocaine — the genocide powder.' He has also used social media to claim he had set up a 'firing squad' to 'take out' paedophiles in Ireland. He posted the bizarre warning on TikTok, which he has previously been banned from, in a video in January where he claims paedophiles fleeing harsh new laws in the US will be 'landing in Ireland'. The previous September, Delaney called for people to join a protest outside Mountjoy Prison in support of jailed Enoch Burke and to protect children from 'paedophilia.' This was not the first time that he had publicly supported Burke having previously urged followers to do 'the decent thing' and write a Christmas card to Burke who was spending the festive season in Mountjoy Prison. He also backed the racist anti-immigrant protest in Belfast in August that descended into violent chaos. And he posted a video the day after the murders of three young girls in Southport which sparked rioting across the UK blaming it on 'a radical Muslim'. In March, he urged people to join in the protest at the former Crown Paints warehouse on the Malahide Road saying he doesn't want international protection applicants being 'dumped around Irish women and children'.
