Archive for the 'Ask DrugMonkey' category

Ask DrugMonkey: Has the revision strategy changed for NIH Grants in the A1 era?

May 27 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Careerism, Grant Review

Occasional commenter crystaldoc left a query on an early post.

Given recent changes in the NIH process (in particular only one chance for resubmission, and less information in the tea leaves of the new summary statements), when does it make sense to resubmit? When does it make more sense to change it up and put in a new submission? Any pragmatic advice or guidelines based on impact scores or percentiles? How often are A1's funded when the original submission was streamlined? Or at 40-50th percentile, or 30-40th percentile? Are these data available anywhere?

I offered up a prior post in which I posted some longitudinal data on the funding of NIH grants unrevised and at the A1 and A2 revision stages.
crystaldoc was not impressed.

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#proofwaltdisneysmokedpot

Apr 30 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Cannabis

I made the idle observation on Twitter yesterday that someone had found this blog by searching for the string "proof walt disney smoked pot". My initial read:

search words finding the blog: "proof walt disney smoked pot". Really people? Really?

Apparently some folks are amused by this concept.

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Your academic society is working for (or against?) you under the NIH Grant waterline

Apr 02 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Careerism, Grant Review, Scientific Meetings

A recent blog entry from Pascale H. Lane discusses her reasons for belonging to academic societies. Our good blog friend Dr. Isis is frequently found to be going all fangrrl about the APS (no, not the real APS, these Physiological pretenders who are well down the GoogJuice list). Pascale touched on one Golden Thought about what academic societies can do that is, or should be, of general interest to my readership:

The society maintains several grant programs for research funding, and it leads advocacy efforts to maintain adequate federal funding for kidney disease research and treatment.

Grant $$$! Wooot!

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Your Grant in Review: The outlier proves I need to appeal!!!!

Mar 10 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Grant Review, Grantsmanship, NIH

I've been meaning to pick up on a comment made by a reader over at writedit's epic thread on NIH paylines, scores and whatall. (If you want to swap war stories and score/IC payline grumbling, that is the hot place in town.) The guy was ticked off about a recent review he received and had a question:

I am an establishe investigator. I subnitted a competing renewal ... I got a score of 40 (37 percentile). I was very shocked and dissapointed to find out that my application had a preliminary score of 2.7 (which would have been fundable) but it seems one negative reviewer carried the day, and convinced others to pull down the score. I have not yet seen the comments, but if the comments have factual errors, especially from the negative errors, can I appeal the review and request a re-review?

Recently, as luck would have it, a loyal reader of the blog submitted the following scores, received on the review of her R01 grant proposal. Under the new scoring procedures in place since last June, these are scores which each reviewer suggests for criteria of Significance, Investigator, Innovation, Approach and Environment. I may have slightly re-ordered specific scores for concealment purposes but this is essentially the flavor.
rev#1: 2,1,1,1,1
rev#2: 2,2,3,3,1
rev#3: 3,2,5,4,2
It really is always Reviewer #3, isn't it?

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Ask DrugMonkey: Will you comment for attribution?

Mar 02 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Blogging, Science Communication

Every now and again I get a request to provide information to an individual who writes for a mainstream media print outlet. Sometimes ones that are focused on the scientific enterprise, sometimes ones that have a regional focus and sometimes the larger, more general national news organizations. The latest one was from Sharon Begley of Newsweek .
The typical request includes some stroking "I'm a big fan of your blog" (yeah, you and the spam commenters, bucko) and a request for a voice interview on some topic of interest that is obviously related to my blogging.
So far, so good.
Even if I do not really understand the fetish with the voice interview over the email exchange. (Oh, ok, yes I do*.)
Then, with various degrees of clumsiness, they work around to the question of my real identity and how they would like to cite that real identity in their article.
Of course, I refuse.

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Your Grant in Review: The impact of institutional affiliation

Feb 11 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Careerism, Grant Review, NIH

A comment on a recent post discussing the impersonality of perceived bias in the NIH grant game asks:

I would be interested to know your (and others) opinion(s) on the weight that is given to the institution, aka, environment. In other words, how important is your ZIP code?

My answer: Crucial, immaterial....meh. More after the jump.

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Why do we blog, the kiss-and-makeup edition

Feb 03 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Blogging, Science Communication, Social Media, Tribe of Science

As I have been beating the decidedly undead horse of Nature Network over their recent introspection post at the Of Schemes and Memes blog, I better take up the challenge from steffi suhr of the Science behind the scenes blog.

This recent kerfuffle (again, if you've missed it, good!) has - for me - just reinforced how important it is to allow different styles and accept and tolerate (blog-)cultural differences. So, in the general spirit of kissing and making up, I invite you to join in and answer these slightly different questions1:
* What made you start blogging?
* Is a sense of community an important part of blogging for you, or do you prefer blogging 'solo'?
* Are there blogs you never look at? If yes, why (be nice and don't name names)?
* Who are you blogging for/who are you talking to?
* Do you think you may be getting people exposed to some science through your blog who otherwise wouldn't be?
* Do you think any non-blogger cares about any of the above things?

My answers after the jump.

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Open Thread: Obama's freeze and the NIH (UPDATED)

Jan 29 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, NIH Budgets and Economics

Had a letter come in to your friendly blogstaff today.

What are the implications (if any) of a three-year spending freeze by the Obama administration staring in 2011 on the NIH research budget (no money at all, no increase in money over 2010, a decrease vs. 2010)?

A couple of links to the story are here, here, here.
I don't really have much of a response beyond "bad". How about you?

UPDATE 020110:
Phew? ($1B, or about a 3% increase for NIH)

proposed-changesObama10.jpg
source
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A rejection is a rejection so who cares if it goes out for review

Jan 05 2010 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Peer Review, Science Publication

A question of interest to me has arisen in another online venue. As most of my readers realize, journals can refuse to publish your manuscript in one of two major ways.
First, of course, is if the manuscript has been sent out to ~2-4 of your scientific peers and they have decided that it is not of sufficient quality for publication in the journal in question.
The second way is that the editor may decide not to send it out for review at all and simply reject it herself.
Which do you prefer? Which hurts less?
When I think about this, I conclude that I'd rather have more than one reviewer and the editor deciding my manuscript is not appropriate for publication. It makes no practical difference, a rejection is a rejection. Sending it out also burns a couple or five weeks that could be spent submitting it elsewhere for consideration and/or improving it. but still.... rejection by editorial fiat just seems like you were refused a fair hearing.
...kinda like when a grant application gets triaged.

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Your Grant in Review: The rebuttal to critique

Dec 08 2009 Published by under Ask DrugMonkey, Careerism, Grant Review, NIH

A recent query directed my way gives me an opportunity to discuss a grantsmithing subtlety I don't believe I've discussed before. Not recently anyway.

Hello,
I discovered your blog recently, and thoroughly enjoy it. May I ask your opinion on the following, as I am at a loss as to how to interpret it. I submitted a revised R21 (A1) and received a score in the excellent range (two glowing critiques; mostly 1's and 2's), but no invitation to submit JIT information; I turned my attention to other matters.
[Prior to Council] I received an unexpected email from the PO, asking me to provide a one page rebuttal to overarching criticisms ASAP. I did so, and admittedly my spirits soared, thinking this is a very good sign. [Eventually it was communicated that Program had] determined that the proposal was meritous and had high potential, but that given the preliminary data in hand, it no longer 'f'it' the R21 program, and that I should submit it as an RO1. I am crushed.
My question: Can POs do this? Doesn't Council determine appropriateness and fundability of proposals? What are my options?

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