by admin on February 1, 2012
The funder of big, complex and expensive studies whose costs often run into the millions of dollars, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) presents a resource like no other. It’s never been easy to secure an NIH grant; for one thing, substantial data backing up one’s hypothesis is needed – which means researchers need to access substantial sums of money before they apply for the grant. The pre-grant stage is where non-profit organizations, which can provide seed money (about $100,000) for researchers to get the data they need to apply, shine.
Getting the preliminary data is just the beginning, though. With grant success rates at less than 20%, grants are hard to come by. The NIH estimates that grant success rates of about 30% are about right; anything lower than that suggests the NIH may be missing significant breakthroughs.
… Read More
by admin on February 6, 2012
NIH neglect is on the verge of producing a downturn in ME/CFS research that may take years to recover from. Some background information is necessary.
The Effective Grant Program (and the Ineffective One)
The NIH produces two types of grants; Program Announcements (PA’s) and Requests for Applications (RFAs). Program Announcements ‘announce’ what kind of research the NIH is willing to fund; RFA’s announce what kinds of research the NIH is willing to fund and come with a guaranteed pool of money. (Guess which one gets better results?)
The funded grant proposals are important, even vital vehicles for drawing interest to controversial disorders like chronic fatigue syndrome which have trouble attracting researchers. One important facet of RFA’s are the increased grant acceptance rates that come with them.… Read More
