Stimulus Application? Not Me

If you are a biologist in the United States, you are likely to be acutely aware of the new funding for biology from the economic stimulus program of President Barack Obama's administration. The extra funds going into both the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation are likely to have a very positive effect on grant funding in the short term and on our scientific infrastructure over the next 5 years. Wisely, the NIH used most of the stimulus funding to raise the current payline for approved grants.

The NIH also put some of the new funding (at least $200 million) into what they call "Challenge Grants." These are intended for innovative ideas with a quick payoff that might be difficult to fund otherwise. Although the intent is good, history suggests that these grants will eventually be looked upon as one of the greatest time wasters of the decade.

A similar sudden funding opportunity occurred in the early 1990s when the NIH paylines plunged into the low teens. Although tight NIH funding was negatively impacting all cancer research at the time, there was particularly little research being done on breast cancer, largely due to the lack of good experimental systems. My laboratory had a particular interest in breast cancer research and had spent the previous several years establishing a good model system. We had made some progress, but our understanding was still well behind that of other cancers, such as leukemia. This made it very difficult to successfully compete for NIH funding.

The new funding opportunity arose from the newly established US Army Breast Cancer Research Program. After intense lobbying from the National Breast Cancer Coalition in 1991, Congress decided to provide some targeted funding. However, the only extra money they could find on short order was from the Department of Defense (DoD).

For my laboratory, the timing was perfect. We had compiled many years worth of preliminary data, and our scope was exactly what was being requested by the program. We wrote up a proposal, expecting to achieve a slam-dunk. It turns out we were lucky to make a basket.

It seems that every scientist who had even a vague interest in cancer research submitted a proposal. According to my conversations with many of these applicants, the logic was that because the request was so sudden and so much money was involved (over $150 million), the chance of getting funding, even for a vaguely relevant proposal, was good. Unfortunately, this idea simultaneously occurred to a very large number of investigators. Throw in tight NIH funding, and you have a recipe for a deluge.

In my area of research, only about 4% of the grants were funded, which was much less than the NIH payline. My proposal just hit the 4% mark, and I was funded by the thinnest possible margin. What seemed like a sure thing ended up being a far more competitive situation than a regular NIH grant.

I am afraid that the situation with respect to the Challenge Grants will be similar in that only a small fraction of the expected deluge of grants will be funded. NIH says it will fund at least 200 projects, and has provided a very specific list of over 60 topics. A simple calculation shows that only a couple of grants will be funded per topic. Science magazine quotes the vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Irvine as saying that her campus will be submitting "over 200" Challenge Grants. My discussions with friends from other universities suggest that this is a typical response. Even if this is an extreme overestimate, this would still translate to many thousands of applications flooding into the NIH, putting the payline well below the 4% that I experienced from the DoD. As was the case with the Army grants, I suspect that if the topics are not addressed exactly, grants will not stand a chance.

Writing grants can be a useful exercise in terms of organizing our thoughts and consolidating research data. However, the lessons of history are clear. If you do not have a perfect match for a sudden research opportunity, proposals are likely to be of academic rather than practical benefit. As for me, I think I will sit this dance out.

Steven Wiley is a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Fellow and director of PNNL's Biomolecular Systems Initiative.

"These are exciting times for biomedical research and NIH," added Acting NIH Director Raynard S. Kington, M.D., Ph.D. "We issued the Challenge Grant Request for Applications and received the largest response in our history from the scientific community, both in terms of applications and assistance with the peer review process. Through the Challenge Grants, NIH will invest in targeted research of the highest quality that will impact both economic growth and human health." - NIH News

To be truthful, Kington should replace "exciting" with "desperate". I have no doubt that among the 20,000 applicants to the Challenge Grants were those who could not get the traditional RO1 grants or, even, those who want to get the funding through the Challenge Grants in addition to the RO1 grants that they already have. It's also a matter of semantics just how much more "new" or "novel" the research proposals targeted by this new grant would be, in comparison to the RO1 grant research proposals, as all research grant proposals must offer new goals anyway. How well the reviewers who have been reviewing the RO1 grant applications will review the Challenge grant applications is also big question. I anticipate just more confusions, frustrations, criticisms, disgruntlements, or controversies with the so-called Challenge Grant.

According to the e-mail I got today, 18,000 reviewers are reviewing the 20,000 grants. This effort may not help a large number scientist get funding, but it certainly is keeping scientists busy. Busy as in move that pile a bricks from here to there, not use that pile of bricks to build a house.

The chance of getting funded from these stimulus grants is going to be much worse than the poor paylines that have existed for the past few years.

It is not clear to me who is to blame. Congress gave NIH $10 billion. No complaints. By law NIH has to do peer review for most of it. Doing the best they can under the law. Desperate (or maybe greedy depending on your point of view) universities, schools and businesses are clawing for every dollar they can get. Hard to blame them.

If more money leads to lower pay lines then less money might lead to higher ones?

Remember, pay lines would go up just as much by cutting the number of apps in half as it would by doubling the budget.

With over 20,000 submissions for 200 grants, NIH should take into account the real cost of this RFA. The number of man-years effort lost must be staggering. And who pays for the effort? My department funds only the NIH minimum 2% effort to prepare new research grants (about 5 days a year). The Challenge Grant experience should lend urgency to reform of federal research grant funding, a process that has begun but so far has yielded only cosmetic results.

it is a lottery grant.

Can anyone confirm the rumor that there were fewer R01 applications this round as a result of the stimulus grants?

They can't be any worse than the returns that the federal government got by investing in the traditional NIH grants that have had miserably low success rates on advancing medical science.

Not to be outdone, the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California beat the drums loudly to spur both Challenge and Supplement applications. Pinned to my lapel is a congratulatory pin sent to me from our Dean stating that "I met the Keck School 500 Team Challenge ARRA 2009" (we applied for a supplement, not a Challenge Grant). That's right. A School goal of 500 applications was met. How few will be funded remains to be seen.

That over 20,000 challenge grants (RC1s) were received. The math is painful.

LINK