A new NIH proposal would conceal impact scores on grant applications, instead grouping submissions into broad “discussed” and “not discussed” buckets. Experts and scientists criticized the plan as reducing transparency around peer-review outcomes and weakening accountability for how funding decisions are formed. The current process uses peer review scoring to communicate an impact score to applicants; the proposed change would withhold numeric scoring while retaining written critiques and some criterion-factor scores. Opponents argue that concealment could obscure consensus and increase uncertainty even when applications fall near decision thresholds. For biotech and academic labs that rely on predictable funding signals, the policy shift is more than administrative: it could affect how teams interpret feedback, manage resubmissions, and plan research investment.