Your Grant In Review: Errors of fact from incompetent reviewers

Bjoern Brembs has posted a lengthy complaint about the errors of fact made by incompetent reviewers of his grant application.

I get it. I really do. I could write a similar penetrating expose of the incompetence of reviewers on at least half of my summary statements.

And I will admit that I probably have these thoughts running through my mind on the first six or seven reads of the summary statements for my proposals.

But I’m telling you. You have to let that stuff eventually roll off you like water off the proverbial duck’s back. Believe me*.

Brembs:

Had Reviewer #1 been an expert in the field, they would have recognized that in this publication there are several crucial control experiments missing, both genetic and behavioral, to draw such firm conclusions about the role of FoxP.
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These issues are not discussed in the proposal, as we expect the reviewers to be expert peers.

Speaking for the NIH grant system only, you are an idiot if you expect this level of “expert peer” as the assigned reviewers to each and every one of your applications. I am not going to pretend to be an expert in this issue but even I can suspect that the body of work on this area does not lead each and every person who is “expert” to the same conclusion. And therefore even an expert might disagree with Brembs on what reviewers should “recognize”. A less-than-expert is going to be subject to a cursory or rapid reading of related literature or, perhaps, an incomplete understanding from a prior episode of attending to the issue.

As a grant applicant, I’m sorry, but it is your job to make your interpretations clear, particularly if you know there are papers pointing in different directions in the literature.

More ‘tude from the Brembster:

For the non-expert, these issues are mentioned both in our own FoxP publication and in more detail in a related blog post.
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These issues are not discussed in the proposal, as we expect the reviewers to be expert peers. Discussing them at length on, e.g., a graduate student level, would substantially increase the length of the proposal.

These are repeated several times triumphantly as if they are some excellent sick burn. Don’t think like this. First, NIH reviewers are not expected to do a lot of outside research reading your papers (or others’) to apprehend the critical information needed to appreciate your proposal. Second, NIH reviewers are explicitly cautioned not to follow links to sites controlled by the applicant. DO. NOT. EXPECT. REVIEWERS. TO. READ. YOUR. BLOG! …or your papers.

With respect to “graduate student level”, it will be better for you to keep in mind that many peers who do not work directly in the narrow topic you are proposing to study have essentially a graduate student level acquaintance with your topic. Write your proposal accordingly. Draw the reader through it by the hand.

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*Trump voice