Initial outcome of limiting NIH apps to a single revision?

The latest Peer Review Notes issue [pdf] from the Center for Scientific Review of the US National Institutes of Health reports some initial data on their move to eliminate the second round of revision of grant applications.
Personally, I thought this was very likely only a partial fix to the problem. As I’ve discussed, I was no fan of the way that available rounds of revision led study sections to refuse to get serious about reviewing apps until they had returned from at least one round of review. So I think it is a good idea to try to break this particular time-wasting bit of study section culture.

Idle thought of the day

It is only through internet comments that I am realizing how much stupid, idiotic, dumbfuck information about the NIH grant process floats around out there. and why being at East Jezuz State University may be a serious handicap for a newbie Assistant Professor that wants to get a grant. The people that I was around as a newly independent investigator may have had some perspectives warped by their own experiences from long ago. But they were never full of flat out wrong shit like this.

..some of the faculty at my institution told my mentor that a code 44 is the kiss of death to applications.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!!!!!

If you see a Vertebrate Animals or Human Subjects mention on your summary statement that is a bar to funding, all this means (in most cases) is that you have to fix the text of what you wrote in your application. It is not typically an actual objection to what you are doing or planning to do, you just didn’t describe it well. Or even if it IS more substantive, FIX IT!

If you got a score that is otherwise good enough to fund, there will be an internal review process of your revised sections. Assuming that goes well, you are good to go.

Anyone who claims that it is an automatic prevention of funding needs some re-education.

Hard headed applicant?

This cracked me up. In doing a little research for my post over at Sb, I ran across a couple of NIH applications that were funded on the A6 version. Yep, that means somebody submitted an application seven times to get it funded (this was prior to 1996 when you could do this). What sort of person would do that, I wondered?

Click to embiggen so you can appreciate the key point.

ahh, of course. Someone who was in year 28 of his other R01. Unfortunately RePORTER seems to have lost a lot of the historical data that CRISP used to have so it is hard to tell precisely. But you wanna bet this guy had one grant that he renewed continually for decades…then when it came time to write a new proposal had no idea how to deal with critical comments, perhaps from a new set of reviewers that were not his long time cronies?

How is your Scientopia reading experience going?

An open thread with a simple query.

We’ve been operating for a few months now, with time for you to get to know us. We’ve had a little wave of new recruiting in the past month as well.

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