Medical Writing, Editing & Grantsmanship

The NIH is piloting new Adobe application forms in 3 RFAs with receipt dates in October: RFA-AI-08-020, RFA-DE-09-001 (R01), and RFA-DE-09-002 (R21) (the latter two were originally posted with PureEdge application forms and were reposted on July 1 with the new Adobe forms, which must be used). The SF424 Application Guide for Adobe forms will be available on or before August 1, 2008. Full conversion from PureEdge to Adobe forms is planned for December 2008. A quick summary of the NIH notice on these matters is available from our very helpful friends at NIAID.

In other news (from NIAID), NIH has scheduled the transition to electronic application of the following grant types:

Career development awards (K) — February 12, 2009.
Fellowships (F) — April 8, 2009.
Institutional Training Grants (T) — September 25, 2009.

Still undetermined is the date for moving multiproject grants into the electronic sphere.

Update: Nature provides its brief take on the reforms, as does Science.

Update: In addition, NIAID reports that “This month, NIH will launch some pilots and try some changes, such as shortening the length of R01 and some other applications, developing a new scoring system, and giving applicants more useful feedback.” This month? June???

Today the Great Zerhouni announced “Enhancements to Peer Review” of the sort that would not wind up in your spam folder. The Advisory Council to the Director met today, and Larry Tabak’s presentation to the same about Enhancing Peer Review actually has some meat to it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yawn. The May edition of Peer Review Notes includes exciting job opportunities (folks looking to leave the lab: SROs wanted, not to mention a director for the new Translational & Clinical Sciences Division … perhaps a glimmer of hope, Whimple), an asynchronous electronic discussion review anecdote, updates on IRG realignments, and the story of a $10 grant awarded to a 10-year-old in 1957 (project had NO public health significance no less!).

I’m still wondering how the following peer review recommendations (a la Great Zerhouni) - apparently to be phased in via a pilot program in JUNE - represent a significant enhancement of the process:

Restructured Applications: The recommendations also [in addition to shorter R01 application length] call for R01 applications that are structured according to the review criteria with an emphasis on an application’s impact and significance in advancing scientific knowledge. Each application would be rated against individual criteria and also given an overall score. Applications would then be ranked, and any necessary adjustments in scoring made. [okay, the ranking is new - so you would get priority score, percentile, and rank?]

More Focused Reviews: Reviews themselves would be shorter and more specifically address how applications fared in terms of the criteria—impact, investigator, innovation/originality, research plan and environment. This set of changes will emphasize the impact of the application, versus the methodology, allow reviewers to read more applications and give applicants, councils and staff clearer feedback. [hmmm]

Enhanced Training: The recommendations also call for enhanced training for Scientific Review Officers, chairs and members and incentives for reviewers. [don't hold back folks - let them know what might incentivize you!]

Update: Thus Spake Zerhouni … the projection of Age Distribution of PIs out to 2020 is amusing.

Update: The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about NIH efforts to lure back senior reviewers, including an update on pilot peer review reform projects underway and a table at the end showing the percentage of assistant professors serving on CSR panels for 2002, 2005, and 2007. The numbers? 8%, 10%, 7%, respectively.

The Peer Review Advisory Committee (not to be confused with the Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director on NIH Peer Review) met today, and the presentations seem to all be uploaded … except for the Great Zerhouni’s update on NIH Peer Review Enhancements. So, we have:

- Toni Scarpa on CSR Initiatives to Improve Peer Review (most bang for the buck re: content)

- Megan Columbus on Electronic Submission Update (transition to Adobe not until Dec 2008 - tentatively)

- Don Scheider on CSR Realignments (neuroscience case studies) & Clustering of Applications (orphan applications explained)

- Marion Mueller on Peer Review in Germany (leads with quote “Peer review is 50% garbage, 50% malice, and 10% good advice.”)

- Olivia Bartlett & Shamala Srinivas on Instantaneous Electronic Scoring of Multicomponent Applications (P01, P50, U19, U54)

Norka Ruiz Bravo has two slides comparing outcomes in women and men and new and established investigators. For 2006, it seems 11% of women and 9% of men scored within the top 10% in CSR study sections. According to the May 2008 council meetings (nice trick to provide these data on April 30th), 13% of new investigators and 18% of established investigators had Type 1 applications scoring within the 20th percentile. Interestingly, the May councils in 2001 and 2002 showed the distribution to be 15% and 17%, respectively, with the gap creeping up in May 2006 (14% vs 18%) and again in May 2007 (14% vs 19%).

Case study from the writedit files with excerpts from a triaged R21 summary statement, which means the PI would have only one page in which to respond to all 3 reviewers. For those of you out there who have not yet had the pleasure of discerning the true meaning of an unscored summary statement, enjoy this taste of what you might have to look forward to.

Reviewer #1: “The application is not competitive, suffers from a lack of precision, and describes a series of weakly related studies aimed at investigating the …”

Reviewer #2: “This excellent application seeks to delineate the interactions of … and their roles in … . The investigator and environment are outstanding, and the work is highly innovative.” [note: "Excellent" refers to score range of 150-200]

Reviewer #3: “As a proof of concept, this application has great appeal. However, it was not clear to this reviewer that … is a worthy target for all of this effort.”

These would be from the “Overall Evaluation” sections at the end of the first two individual critiques (no summary of study section discussion in this case due to traiged status) and extracted from the last of 3 paragraphs provided by the third reviewer. I’m guessing a lot of NIH applicants out there are smiling (grimacing) & nodding knowingly.

Many clues can be found in the summary statement. The second laudatory reviewer (<1 p review) regurgitates the applicant’s main points but provides no real additional commentary. So, not a lot of weight to this “critique” no matter how attractive it might be to consider this to be the only one worth listening to.

The first (2.75 p review) and third (0.75 p review) reviewers cite specific concerns and their rationale for being concerned, which is what adds weight to their input. If the PI were responding, these would be the points to address in the Intro and to correct in the scientific approach & the application.

In its favor, consider that the significance and innovation of the application were uniformly recognized, the PI thought to be well qualified, and the environment cited as strong … so not total discouragement. And, for those curious about this point in relation to the R21 mechanism, yes, assume preliminary data were presented (& discussed in the first & third critiques).

Okay … a little help here, and this is no April Fool’s. I need to come up with 45 min worth of what not to do if you want to get funded. I could come up with dozens and dozens of bullets like this, and I have priceless gems from actual narratives that I couldn’t possibly make up if I tried. But I really am interested in what fatal flaws crop up in the routine grant-writing life of a reagent-quality scientist. When I’m all done in a few weeks, I promise to slap it up as a resource page (like NIH Paylines & Resources).

- Let the NIH assign your grant
- Mislabel tables/figures (better yet, don’t include any)
- Make legends small/cryptic (taking up valuable space)
- Don’t bother with letters of support/collaboration
- Only address the comments you agree with in your revision introduction
- Propose experiments using reagents/cell lines/transgenic models you don’t have & are challenging to generate
- Propose complex aims each of which is contingent on achievement of the one prior
- End vague sentences describing statistical analyses with “etc.”
- Mention by name as many well-known investigators as possible without explaining/justifying their role, which has no budget allocation either (no need for biosketch, everyone knows who they are - or a letter of support, hate to bother them)
- Use as many uncommon abbreviations as possible (defining each is optional - saves more space)
- Don’t waste space between paragraphs
- Remember, instructions are for sissies
- Never, ever show your grant application to anyone before submission

NIAID (who else) has a handy new NIH Grant Cycle tutorial/resource guide that steps you through the entire process of developing, preparing, submitting, resubmitting, managing, and renewing an NIH grant application/award.

Well, 18 months after relocating to Baby It’s Cold Outside, I’m still unpacking boxes & rifling through forests worth of files. Pay dirt! A few yellowing, crumpled mimeographs (okay, not that old & lacking that distinctive smell - but certainly photocopies of lists tapped out on manual typewriters) that I’ve managed to keep with me for nearly a quarter of a century, so heaven knows the original source. Suffice it to say, not me. The list of useful research phrases can be found online. I’m not sure I’ve seen this explanation for scientific method though:

The cornerstone of modern science is the scientific method. Scientists first formulate hypotheses, or predictions, and then perform experiments to test their hypotheses. There are two forms of scientific method, the inductive and the deductive.

INDUCTIVE:

DEDUCTIVE:

Update: Yusuf Hannun from MUSC has a thoughtful letter in Nature regarding unaddressed (& not likely to be studied) potential pitfalls of the recommended changes.

Update: Science offers their take on the planned changes.

Update: On Thursday, February 21, 2008, the ACD Working Group on Peer Review made its recommendations to the full Advisory Committee to the Director (i.e., the Great Zerhouni). Larry Tabak went through the PowerPoint slides pretty much verbatim, and Nature has posted their recap. I was pleased to hear about the possible demise of the A1/A2 status and efforts to limit the number of awards per PI - and the NRR designation (not recommended for resubmission). Read the rest of this entry »

Someday, in my spare time (tee-hee-hee), I’ll create a dynamic resource page similar to the one for Paylines that provides links to the various IC cleared concept clearinghouses. Or maybe I’ll just add these links to the Paylines page. Done (links added to Paylines page, that is). In the meantime, please remember to go see what your favorite IC council has been up to (besides approving your application for funding, of course). For example, NIAID just cleared concepts for several ambitious programs.