One researcher tells Scientific American that the change would reduce transparency and risk politicizing the grant review process
By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron
A view of the main historical building of the National Institutes of Health at the agency’s campus in Bethesda, Md. The U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps seal is seen at the top of the building.
Shutterstock/grandbrothers
The National Institutes of Health is weighing changes to the procedures it uses to allot scientific funding. Experts say the change—concealing scores on applications for grants—could reduce transparency around how federal money is spent on research.
Currently, applications for NIH grants are examined by at least three experts in the applicant’s field of research. That panel of peer reviewers then submits a written review that summarizes the likely outcomes of the proposed research, as well as the application’s strengths and weakness. The reviewers also each give the application a score between 1 and 9, with 1 being the highest. An average of these, called the impact score, is revealed to the applicant.
Under the proposed changes, grant applicants wouldn’t find out their impact score. Instead they would be told whether their application landed in one of three broad buckets: the top 25 percent, or “most competitive,” the next 25 percent, or “competitive,” and the bottom 50 percent, or “not discussed.” The latter category would mean an application did not even warrant extended discussion among the peer reviewers.
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The proposal is designed to communicate “valuable information about the assessed scientific merit” and give program officers more flexibility on making awards, according to an NIH document outlining the rule change.
“Discussed applications would still receive a resume of discussion and all applications would still receive written critiques from the assigned reviewers, to include individual criterion/factor scores,” the document states. But some scientists and research organizations have criticized the change as potentially reducing transparency and accountability.
Joshua Weitz, a biology professor at the University of Maryland, said in a Substack post that the proposal could have disastrous results for the scientific community and lead to less transparency for both applicants and the NIH program officers charged with managing grant portfolios. Under the new system, he argued, an application that scored in the top 1 percent may be treated the same as one that scored lower but still within the top 25 percent.
“By concealing scores, the NIH proposal would make it harder for program officers to assess consensus, lead to greater uncertainty for applicants and undermine scientific peer review," Weitz tells Scientific American.
The proposal marks the latest way the Trump administration has tried to flex its muscles over scientific grants. Floated earlier this year, a separate bid to have political appointees, rather than peer review panels, decide grant recipients garnered significant backlash—and was put on hold until at least December after Congress rejected the change. “The NIH proposal should be interpreted in this broader context,” Weitz says.
“By reducing transparency and concealing quantitative feedback from experts serving on scientific review groups, the NIH proposal makes it harder for applicants and the public to understand the basis for grant award recommendations,” he adds. “In the absence of transparent data sharing, there is an increased risk that political priorities override scientific review in grant decisions.”
The proposal’s public comment period opened in August and ends today. Other comments on the proposal from research groups echo Weitz’s caution.
In a statement, the North American Vascular Biology Organization, which submitted a comment to the NIH, wrote that the proposed grant review system might “become significantly less transparent” and “will compromise accountability, and breed uncertainty, inefficiency, and distrust. It is also likely that the dearth of data regarding grant reviews will compromise the ability of Congress to exercise oversight and the agency’s own ability to assess and improve its funding choices.”
Meanwhile, Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) wrote in a submitted comment that while it supports the NIH’s stated goal of ensuring funding decisions reflect the peer review process, any changes must “provide researchers with sufficient information to understand the scientific strengths and weaknesses” identified during peer review.
“Researchers and institutions have experienced significant changes to NIH funding policies, priorities, and grantmaking practices over the past year,” GHTC wrote. “Additional reforms should be implemented in a measured and thoughtful manner and clearly communicated to stakeholders to minimize unnecessary disruption to the research ecosystem.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, did not immediately return a request for comment.