NIH GRANT RATING: NONSENSE PERSISTS

[Alexander Berezin]

NIN PROPOSED PEER-REVIEW "REFORM":
NONSENSE PERSISTS

NIH propsals to 'reform' peer review
system for grants were just posted.

Stupendous length of this document
(93 KB) and complete lack of any trace of 
creative imagination in it, makes no
doubt that it is just another attempt
to add new epicycles (crystal spheres)
to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy,
this time called Peer Review Myth.

It certainly will not work in the
direction of improvement (because it
can't) and will likely make the system 
even worse, increasing the already deplorable
monopolization of funds by the Old Boys
Network of the Grantsmanship aristocracy.

The recognition of the fundamental
issue : that the funding system should
fund RESEARCHERS (not futurological 
promises of 'proposals' - i.e. review
of UNDONE work) makes the whole
effort ihnerently futile, as was over
and other again explained by many 
thoughtful critics.

But this criticism was in vain, because 
people in charge neither want nor can 
understand the intellectual argument.

The authors of this document are so 
adamantly sure that the stars are the
pinnheads on the crystal sphere, 
that they can't see the profound
stupidity of what they are doing.

As Peter Drucker says "The most
ridiculous and pitiful thing is that 
so many people persistently try to 
improve the system which should not 
even exist in the first place".

In this case, this wrong thing is
the pathological faith that it makes
sense to evaluate the quality of
the undone work (so called proposals),
while in any thinkable reality we can
ONLY (more-or-less sensibly, and even
this is often errs) to evalute the 
impact of the already done work and 
fund the research groups on the
basis of their ACTUAL track record. 

The fact that NIH people don't even
see where to start, and travel in
the wrong direction (notorious 
downhill ski escapade to Florida) 
shows the profound level of the
intellectual malaise the system has 
now reached.

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Alexander A. Berezin, PhD
Department of Engineering Physics
McMaster University, Hamilton,
Ontario, Canada, L8S 4L7
tel. (905) 525-9140 ext. 24546
e-mail: BEREZIN at MCMASTER.CA
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