“NIH has implemented a research pause—referred to as a safety stand-down—at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick. This decision follows identification and documentation of personnel issues involving contract staff that compromised the facility’s safety culture, prompting this research pause. During the stand-down, no research will be conducted, and access will be limited to essential personnel only, to safeguard the facility and its resources.”

Moss did not elaborate on the nature of the personnel issues..."

I'd be more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if their MO wasn't to make unspecified and/or undefended accusations about persons, as a way to avoid being accountable for their agenda.

It is our good fortune that we are not restricted to the headline.

In an emailed statement provided to WIRED, Bradley Moss, communication director for the office of research services at NIH, confirmed the halt in research activity. “NIH has implemented a research pause—referred to as a safety stand-down—at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick.

Research can broadly be divided into three categories:

1. Experimental research: Form a hypothesis. Create datapoints by some process: could be mixing chemicals in test tubes, giving patients enrolled in a study a medication, pointing a telescope at the sky, or going out to the Amazon to count bugs. Use those datapoints to confirm or refute the hypothesis.

2. Retrospective research: Form a hypothesis. Use data that already exists and is archived somewhere to confirm or refute the hypothesis.

3. Descriptive research: No hypothesis. Look at existing data and/or published research and comment on trends or the patterns that exist therein.

"Experimental" covers everything and anything you would do in a wet lab. You don't need a wet lab to do research of types 2 or 3 - you can do that in an office or at home. That said, I don't believe we have any confirmation that they used the word experimental in the actual order.