Archive for October, 2008
October 31, 2008 at 5:36 pm
· Filed under Funding Opportunities, Grantsmanship, NIH Advice
The NIH released a notice addressing its Revised New and Early Stage Investigator (ESI) Policies. I normally wouldn’t pull this out for emphasis except the NIH finally gives clear guidance on the mechanism of choice for new investigators: the R01.
The NIH strongly encourages New Investigators, particularly ESIs, to apply for R01 grants when seeking first-time NIH funding.
I have always given this advice for a range of reasons, some of which we discussed previously in reviewing the presentation by an NCI program officer. Some ICs, specifically NIDDK, make it clear they don’t want to see new investigators turn to mechanisms like the R21 as a starter grant, while others, like NINR, set aside the R03 mechanism for new investigators. Two years? Restricted budgets? Not renewable? Who could possibly advise a new investigator with limited time (tenure clock ticking) and resources to invest in applications that face stiff competition yet do little to advance said new investigator on the road to independence? The notice provides a little data to back up this advice:
However, recent analyses indicate that a smaller proportion of individuals with initial R21 or R03 grant support subsequently apply for and obtain R01-equivalent funding. In addition, the initial success rate for R21 applications often is lower than for R01 applications. Since R03 and R21 grants are limited in scope and period of support, they may not be the most effective way to launch an independent research career.
According to the notice, for FY09, NIH expects to support New Investigators at success rates equivalent to that of established investigators submitting new applications. The majority of New Investigators supported in FY09 are expected to be ESIs. SROs will be asked to cluster applications from New Investigators during initial peer review to the extent possible, depending on reviewer availability. The expectation is that these applications will be more effectively evaluated when judged against other applications from individuals at the same career stage. We’ll see.
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October 29, 2008 at 2:01 am
· Filed under Biomedical Writing/Editing, Research News
What if you opened your New York Times and discovered it was populated almost entirely with AP, Reuters, UPI, and other wire stories? What if the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune all looked about the same? Good-bye Science Tuesday. Hello poor new world of newspaper publishing. Or not even that perhaps. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 20, 2008 at 12:31 pm
· Filed under Research News
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October 19, 2008 at 2:44 am
· Filed under Biomedical Research Ethics, Funding Opportunities, Research News, Research Resource
What a concept: “Our mission is simple: To enable the public to fund pilot research projects.”
Whose concept? Whose mission? Fund Science.
A bit more on their mission …
First we’re providing research funds to a whole new generation of researchers that are our future. Secondly we’re walking the public through the scientific process, from grant writing to funding, all the way to the results. Finally we are creating an ecosystem for scientists to collaborate with each other as well as the public on shaping future research projects. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 10, 2008 at 3:58 pm
· Filed under Grantsmanship, NIH Advice, Research Resource
A letter in Science from H. George Mandel (GWU) and Elliot Vesell (PSU) starkly lays out data showing the decline of R01 funding.
From 2000 to 2007, the success rate for new Type 1 applications dropped from 20.3% to 7.2%. The average award per R01 looks to have dropped from $3.38M to $2.69M. For individual institutes, they report new application success rates of 5% for NCI and NIAID and 3% for NINDS. Oof.
For Type 2s in this same period, success rate halved from 53.0% to 25.2%, with the award amount declining from $3.03M to $2.44M. The authors note that “For renewal applications, the decline means discontinuation of 75% of ongoing programs.” What a colossal waste of tax-payer investment. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 7, 2008 at 1:23 am
· Filed under Biomedical Research Ethics, Research News
Writedit has been a bit preoccupied lately but was stunned by an editorial by Richard Gallagher in The Scientist entitled Why the Philosophy of Science Matters. He starts off:
You might expect that newly minted science graduatesﾠ-ﾠwho presumably think of themselves as scientists, and who I’d thought of as scientistsﾠ-ﾠwould have a well-developed sense of what science is. So it’s pretty shocking to discover that a large proportion of them don’t have a clue.
Summarizing James Williams’ commentary on What Makes Science ‘Science’?, Gallagher notes that “a sizeable proportion of science graduates entering teacher training couldn’t define what is a scientific fact, law or hypothesis.” Read the rest of this entry »
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