CSR and critics need to get together on their grant review studies

I was critical of a recent study purporting to show that NIH grant review is totally random because of structural flaws that could not have been designed more precisely to reach a foregone conclusion.

I am also critical of CSR/NIH self-studies. These are harder to track because they are not always published or well promoted. We often only get wind of them when people we know are invited to participate as reviewers. Often the results are not returned to the participants or are returned with an explicit swearing to secrecy.

I’ve done a couple of these self-study reviews for CSR.

I am not impressed by their designs either. Believe me.

As far as I’ve heard or experienced, most (all) of these CSR studies have the same honking flaw of restricted range. Funded applications only.

Along with other obscure design choices that seem to miss the main point*. One review pitted apps funded from closely-related sections against each other. ….except “closely-related” did not appear that close to me. It was more a test of whatever historical accident made CSR cluster those study sections or perhaps a test of mission drift. A better way would have been to cluster study sections to which the same PI submits. Or by assigned PO maybe? By a better key word cluster analysis?

Anyway, the CSR designs are usually weird when I hear about them. They never want to convene multiple panels of very similar reviewers to review the exact same pile of apps in real time. Reporting on their self-studies is spotty at best.

This appears to my eye to be an attempt to service a single political goal. I.e. “Maintain the ability to pretend to Congress that grant review selects only the most meritorious applications for funding with perfect fidelity”.

Th critics, as we’ve seen, do the opposite. Their designs are manipulated to provide a high probability of showing NIH grant review is utterly unreliable and needs to be dismantled and replaced.

Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle? And if these forces would combine to perform some better research we could perhaps better trust jointly proposed solutions.

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*I include the “productivity” data mining. NIH also pulls some sketchy stuff with these studies. Juking it carefully to support their a priori plans, rather than doing the study first and changing policy after.