A Peek Inside NIH Peer Review

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides at least $200 million for the 20,894 challenge grant applications the National Institutes of Health recently received. This influx of applications comes on top of the 16,312 regular applications received for the same June-July funding cycle, which raises the question, how is the NIH deciding which applications receive funding?

Dr. Keith Yamamoto, Executive Vice Dean of the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and member of the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director, explained the process at a briefing of the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus on “Finding and Funding the Best Science: Peer Review at NIH” last week.

The peer review system has “intrinsic complexities,” but it is a “terrific system” and “works extremely well,” said Yamamoto, a veteran reviewer. However, he went on to say that there is always room for improvement.

The NIH’s $30.5 billion annual research budget, which saw a $10.4 billion boost included in the ARRA, supports a large variety of biomedical science projects, but each proposal must undergo peer review to be considered for funding. The NIH Center for Scientific Review oversees expert scientists across the country who review 70 percent of the applications, Yamamoto explained. The institutes review the remaining applications in a very similar process.

Applications are divided into 23 review groups based on subject, such as AIDS & Related Research or Immunology. Each review group further separates the applications into more specific study sections. Study section scientists assess the scientific merit of each proposal. Applications are then sent to the institute councils, comprised of both scientific and nonscientific members. Patient advocates often serve as nonscientific members, Yamamoto said. The councils, which hold the grant dollars, evaluate each project’s relevance to the institute.

There are five core review criteria: impact, approach, innovation, investigator, and environment. Peer reviewers evaluate how important each project is to “advancing the ball,” Yamamoto explained. Experimental designs must be sound and principal investigators and their collaborators should be well trained to execute them. Institutional support and the project’s potential to “challenge existing paradigms” are also valuable attributes for approval, he said.

Although Yamamoto believes the NIH peer review system is the “best system in the world,” he says it is hard to escape from “intrinsic conflicts of interest and conservatism.” Reviewers are likely to assess proposals similar to their own work, which may create a conflict of interest. Conservatism is a concern if reviewers follow the “if you think like I think, then I think you’re really smart” philosophy Yamamoto said—complexities that are “likely to require new policies.”

In an effort to address these concerns and enhance the quality of their peer review, NIH conducted a year-long system evaluation, culminating in a final report released in March 2008. Currently, NIH is focused on supporting early stage investigators, attracting and retaining the best reviewers, maintaining the 60:25:15 ratio of clinical to translational to basic research, and shortening the length of research plans while de-emphasizing preliminary and experimental data, Yamamoto said.

Tags: funding, NIH

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