WIKIMEDIA, LIBRARY OF CONGRESSTo researchers who receive scads of money from the National Institutes of Health every year, the agency has a message: the salad days are over. The federal funding agency announced yesterday (May 2) that it would be instituting a new point system to try and spread around grant money and prevent it from pooling in the coffers of well-established investigators.
As the NIH reported in 2010, roughly 10 percent of grantees are awarded about 40 percent of the research funding doled out by the agency. “While we have made progress in reversing the decline in grant funding to early-career investigators through various programs and policies, the percentage of NIH awards that support this group remains flat,” said NIH Director Francis Collins in the statement announcing the new program, called the Grant Support Index (GSI). “Unfortunately, gains for early-career investigators have been offset by a decline in the percentage of NIH awards that support mid-career investigators.”
The idea for a points system that ensures the NIH wealth is spread around a bit more is not a new one. Science advocacy organization the Federation of American Societies ...
