NIH's Center for Scientific Review (CSR), which runs the panels that review about 70 percent of NIH grant applications, is about to try several new devices to shield clinical-research proposals from unfair competition with laboratory experiments in peer-review panels dominated by basic scientists.
By the end of this year, CSR Director Ellie Ehrenfeld plans to create two new "special emphasis panels" for proposed patient-oriented experiments in oncology and cardiology, and to test a variety of approaches for clinical proposals that still don't seem to fit anywhere.
NEW DIRECTION: Under Director Ellie Ehrenfeld, NIH's Center for Scientific Review is trying to change the method and speed of grant approvals. Study-section bias has been a long-standing complaint of clinical researchers seeking NIH grants. Evaluating clinical-research proposals "does take special expertise," says Timothy Ley of Washington University in St. Louis, president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), and many CSR study ...
