OPEN TO SUGGESTION: Fred Bookstein urges a new ranking system for grant proposals.
A study section meeting is the culmination of a process that begins eight weeks earlier, when each of its members is mailed boxes containing 75 to 100 grant applications. Each of the applications is 25 pages long, not counting supporting documents, which themselves can run to 50 pages or more per application.
Although each reviewer is expected to read every one of those applications, he or she is assigned to write detailed critiques of just seven to 12 of them. Each application will have two such reviewers--designated the primary and the secondary--as well as a "reader," a reviewer who must be prepared to discuss the application in detail, but who isn't required to write a critique.
At the meeting, once the primary, the secondary, and the reader have delivered their opinions of a particular application, there is ...
