Endocrine Insider
May 30, 2008

The Endocrine Society recently submitted comments to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on its draft 2007-2008 Peer Review Self Study. The study was developed by the Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director on NIH Peer Review. Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S, Ph.D., co-chair of the working group, specifically requested the Society’s comments on the draft report, which was released on February 29, 2008, for public comment. The Society’s comments, which were developed by the Research Affairs Core Committee, focused on four recommendations made in the report:

• Ranking applications at the end of the review cycle
• Treating all grant applications as “new” and doing away with the A0, A1, A2 designations
• Requiring NIH to provide scores for all grants and not just those in the top 50th percentile
• Ensuring that application success rates for young investigators be on par with principal investigators

The Society’s comments can be read here:

http://www.endo-society.org/publicpolicy/legislative/letters/index.cfm

The NIH draft report can be read here:

http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/meetings/NIHPeerReviewReportFINALDRAFT.pdf