Musing on NIGMS' grant performance data

Many of you have noted the posts over at the NIGMS feedback loop blog that discuss the number of publications arising from their awarded grants. The last one was geekalicious doozy.

Ever since the first one I’ve been anticipating the use of this information in grant submissions.

I figure it is most likely to arise as a response to prior critique about productivity. Especially for competing continuation proposals that were dinges for modest productivity.

But heck, maybe this should be a preemptive strike on the first submission of the competing continuation?

And of course I have also been eagerly awaiting the deployment of such information during the grant review process. I have been on panels a time or two in which soft statements about “fantastic productivity” or “surprisingly limited productivity” have been matters of discussion. Sometimes contentiously. This is a place where some normative performance data could come in handy.