The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed overhauling how it decides which research projects to fund, and how it reports the outcome of those deliberations. For the past five decades, the agency reported to researchers the precise numerical scores assigned to their project proposals by peer reviewers. The new plan would instead see the agency report whether projects were ranked in one of three broad categories ' a top, middle and bottom ' based on their merit. The scheme, which was announced on Friday, is part of a shift away from relying on scientific peer review in favour of greater discretion to award funds based on agency priorities. The new categories encourage the NIH's 27 institutes and centres to balance competing factors when ranking proposals ' including peer review, but also 'health priorities' and 'the wider research portfolio', the announcement says. Proponents of the change argue that the current scoring system creates a false sense of precision, given...
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