The plan to look at NIH peer review's "rate of failure" by a retrospective examination of scientific advances and their funding will help identify projects that typically succeeded in obtaining funding elsewhere. However, the study cannot estimate the extent of review failure that might be attributable to premature departure from the field of promising investigators who had been denied NIH funding. The potential discoveries of such individuals remain as incalculable as the potential discoveries of buried soldiers. Some rough estimation of this area of failure might be obtained if the study could be augmented by an examination of the current performance and attitudes of such former investigators. But because science itself addresses the unknown and because only a small proportion of research projects bear a significant impact on the future course of discovery, we can never be certain that a particular system of peer review or a particular set of ...
Peer-Review ""Failures""
I applaud NIH's examination of the peer review process (The Scientist, August 8, page 1) and the agency's attempt at procedural reforms aimed at funding the best possible science. At bottom, much of the concern with the peer-review system at NIH, as with professional journals, lies in the inescapable fact that the same small pool of experts serves as both reviewer and reviewee for an extended time in many domains, facilitating two inappropriate practices—backslapping and backbiting. The sm
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William Cooper
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