Should NIH provide a transcript of the discussion of grants?

Respected neuroscientist Bita Moghaddam seems to think this would be a good idea.

Why can’t the actual minutes of the discussion of your grants by NIH Study Sections be shared with you? I know POs and SROs are supposed to take notes but their summary can be inconsistent and inadequate
cc @drugmonkeyblog

— Bita Moghaddam بيتا مقدم (@bita137) February 16, 2018

She then goes on to mention the fact that POs listen in on grant discussion, can take notes and can give the PI a better summary of the discussion that emerges in the Resume of Discussion written by the SRO.

And keep in mind that some POs take word-by-word notes of the discussion and communicate all that to the applicants. This will make the process more consistent and fair since not all POs are thorough.

— Bita Moghaddam بيتا مقدم (@bita137) February 16, 2018

This variability in PO behavior then leads to some variability in the information communicated to the PI. I’ve had one experience where a PO gave me such chapter and verse on the discussion that it might have been slightly over the line (pre- and post-discussion scores). Maybe two other ones where the PO gave me a very substantial run down. But for the most part POs have not been all that helpful- either they didn’t attend or they didn’t pay attention that closely or they just didn’t care to tell me anything past the “we suggest you revise and resubmit” mantra. She has a good point that it is not ideal that there is so much variability. When I’ve touched on this issue in the past, I’ve suggested this is a reason to cultivate as many POs as possible in your grant writing so that you have a chance of getting the “good” ones now and again. Would providing the transcript of discussion help? Maybe?

Or maybe we could just start lobbying the ICs of our fondest acquaintance to take the effort to make the POs behave more consistently.

But I have two problems with Professor Moghaddam’s proposals. First of course, is the quashing effect that de-anonymizing (and while a transcript could still be anonymized it is in the same vein of making reviewers hesitate to speak up) may have on honest and open comment. The second problem is that it goes into reinforcing the idea that properly revising a grant application is merely “doing what they said to do”. Which then should, the thinking goes, make the grant fundable next time.

This is, as you know, not the way the system is set to work and is a gut-feeling behavior of reviewers that the CSR works hard to counter. I don’t know if having the transcript would help or hurt in this regard. I guess it would depend on the mindset of the PI when reading the transcript. If they were looking to merely suss out* the relative ratio of seriousness of various critiques perhaps this would be fine?

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*My fear is that this would just feed the people who are looking to litigate their review to “prove” that they got screwed and deserve funding.