Crocodile tears from experienced NIH investigators over the discontinued A2 revision

Ahh, just when the thoughtful, completely self-interest free prescriptions for saving the NIH extramural grant system from D. Noonan and Cedric Wesley were losing steam (see Odyssey for more), we have a new entry. This one is via an email chain letter from one Robert Benezra (PubMed; Institutional website; Research Crossroads). Unfortunately RePORTER doesn’t seem to generate a good link on a PI search but homeboy’s been very successful at the NIH game. He had a one year F32 in 89-90 and then a 7-8 year stretch to his first R01 but he’s been a busy beaver ever since. I note only three -01A1s on his list, one of which is competing renewal for a Program Project for which he’s only a component head. Benezra seems to have had multiple R01-level awards (some are P01 components) continually and he even has a mainline grant that survived a switch from NIGMS to NCI. The website seems to confirm that he runs an ~18-member lab operation.
In short, a guy who is as inside as you could wish (I mean I saw Harold Varmus listed as a component head of one of the Program Projects this guy is on) now has some complaints.
[Before we move on to my ramblings, you may wish to read a bit of pro/con debate from DrDra of BlueLabCoats and Comrade PhysioProf as a warmup. Additional from Prof-like Substance and Genomic Repairman.]

Question for my NIH-funded PI peeps

Am I the only lucky person in the entire NIH extramural community who has managed to get grants on technical-feasibility type of preliminary data (which can therefore support multiple proposals on fairly different topics) instead of highly specific experiments showing that Aim I SubExperiment 1.c.II actually works (which are of no utility to support anything other than the present proposal)?

My take on the Benezra letter to bring back the A2

…is up over at the ScienceBlogs.

You may also wish to read a bit of pro/con debate from DrDra of BlueLabCoats and Comrade PhysioProf as a warmup. Additional from Prof-like Substance and Genomic Repairman.