NIH Could Use a More Targeted Approach

Mike the Mad Biologist blogs about how to improve the grant review process at NIH. He argues that NIH mandates are too broad and that too much of the funded research is investigator-driven rather than focused around a particular goal. "My experience has been that with very targeted calls for proposals, there are far fewer proposals submitted, and it's much easier to flat out reject them because many proposals are not germane to the funding objectives," he writes. "NIH program officers have to be far more active in defining specific research objectives than they have been."