Discussion
Ok ppl. US feds want your opinion, should they ignore study section rankings?
There’s a proposal to change what gets reported to applicants AND the ppl who decide on funding. Currently, applicants get a rank of 1-10. Currently 1-3 is almost always funded, unless the feds have a reason eg too many grants on that topic too much money to that person. 4-5 need to argue in favor 6-10 almost never.
In the new format, they’d get a rank of 1-3 1&2 are fundable.
In the new system, someone with a 2 doesn’t know if they’re in that 1-3 range or in the 4-5 range, and someone with a 3 doesn’t know if they’re in the low or high range.
This adds a huge amount of uncertainty to the business of academic training. You may not know that the US taxpayer pays to train scientists but we do, and it’s made us the worldwide leader of science in many areas.
So if you are in the US, please comment here:
https://rfi.grants.nih.gov/?s=6a2b1c22c3fcfda46e0badd2
More info here:
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-plan-keep-peer-review-scores-secret-sparks-uproar?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
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Currently, someone with a 1-3 has a good idea that they’ll get funded. They might still submit a new proposal but they’ll accept students knowing that if not this round then next. This give some sort of predictablity for training PhD students which is a 5+ year commitment (grants are 4-5 yrs)
Someone with a 4-5, will be super cautious about hiring.
Someone with a 6+ will know that unless they have another source of funds they shouldn’t accept new ppl.