Into Smaller Pieces

A panel has advised the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to end its Large-Scale Collaborative Project Awards Program, also known as glue grants, reports ScienceInsider. The program began in 2000 as a way for NIGMS to fund large-scale biology projects involving multiple researchers at different institutes. The outcome assessment report is based on a community survey, a literature analysis, and Web site usage analysis, ScienceInsider notes, and it found that two of the five original grants were successes and one had "significant flaws." According to ScienceInsider, “the report points to inadequate oversight by NIGMS, goals set by the groups that were ‘inflexible’ or ‘too sweeping or too narrow,’ ‘missing expertise,’ and poor outreach to the rest of the scientific community.” The panel, however, does not say that NIGMS should stay away from large science, but rather that it should fund it through more, but smaller, awards.