WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTEAfter announcing a plan this May to award 400 additional grants each year to early- and mid-career scientists who fall within a specific definition, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) decided to revise its funding strategy at an advisory board meeting last Friday (December 15). The agency now aims to focus funds on researchers who are struggling to keep their labs afloat, regardless of age.
“Age should not matter,” NIH Principal Deputy Director Larry Tabak said in last week’s meeting, according to Science.
For the NIH, this is the third shift in funding policy this year. In May, the agency announced a plan to cap the number of grants a principal investigator could receive in order to create more opportunities for scientists in their early careers and those struggling to keep their labs running. The cap was planned to be set at 21 points on the Grant Support Index, a metric that quantifies grants using a point system rather than dollars. This would equate to three standard R01 grants.
After receiving criticism from senior scientists who expressed concern that the policy would hamper especially productive labs, the NIH abandoned the ...
.jpg){kind=link}