Your Grant In Review: Junior Reviewers Are Too Focused on Details

Although the enthusiastic witch hunt against the mythical Assistant Professor on study section who “killed my grant” has been percolating along for several years now, I have yet to come across a well supported expression of the complaint. I hear a lot of mewling about how we need “better” and “more experienced” reviewers in the context of calls for reviewers of more advanced age and career status. What I do not hear is a lot of explicit and well-reasoned argument for why older reviewers are necessarily better and why less experienced reviewers are necessarily worse.
When I can pin down someone in person, however, I can extract a limping argument so I might as well address that.