An article titled "Sabotaging the NSF fellowship is a blunder" published in the journal Science (Volume 391, Issue 6789, Page 961, March 2026) calls the sabotage of the NSF fellowship a blunder. It concerns changes to the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) that have caused confusion in the community. NSF announced the eligibility changes on September 26, 2025 in Notice 25-547, shortly before the application deadline, excluding second-year doctoral students. These changes affected thousands of applicants who had trained under the previous rules and increased the risk of losing talent in STEM fields. The number of awarded fellowships fell from 2036 in 2024 to 1000, which represents a cut in funding by 55.3%. There has been an increase in rejections of applications without peer review, particularly in the life sciences, where Grant Witness has documented 45 cases. Congressmen Zoe Lofgren and Haley Stevens sent a letter to NSF urging them to rescind the changes and provide at least a year's advance notice.[1][2][3][4][8]