NIH grant success rates drop to historic low

The National Institutes of Health’s grant-funding success rates are at an historic low of 16 percent because of the automatic across-the-board cuts known as the sequestration that went into effect on 1 March, according to the agency’s May issue of Peer Review Notes.

The newsletter, issued on 28 May, quotes the director of NIH’s Center for Scientific Review, Richard Nakamura, as saying: “Applicants, reviewers and NIH staff are unsettled because everyone knows researchers are facing the devastating closure of labs with promising lines of research.”

Peer Review Notes also quotes Nakamura as telling CSR’s advisory council at a 6 May meeting that the number and quality of research proposals going unfunded have never been higher in the 67-year history of NIH grants. He noted that since 2000, success rates for NIH grant applications have fallen by nearly 50 percent.