More NIH Grant criterion score fun, writ small

As we were just discussing on the Sb blog, the Approach, Significance and Innovation criterion scores are the biggest drivers of Overall Impact Score. Approach remains the king. Or, at least the Approach score correlates best with the Overall Impact score voted for some 32 thousand research grant applications that made it to discussion for the 2010 Fiscal Year.

A good friend of the blog submits the following outcome of a recent grant review. The grant was triaged, thus no discussion and no overall score. However each of three reviewers issued a putatively non-triage score (2-3) for one of the three big criteria. (As per our aforementioned discussion, the Investigator and Environment criterion scores were 2s or better. I told you they matter very little to the outcome!) As you might anticipate, the reviewers also each bagged on (4-6s) the other two remaining important criterion scores.

But here’s the funny part. The three reviewers each picked a different one of the Approach, Innovation and Significance criteria to laud.

So I should advise her to get Scarpa on the phone pronto to complain about the clearly erroneous review, right?