Canadians baulk at reforms to health-research agency

摘要

The biggest overhaul in the 15-year history of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) was meant to rescue biomedical researchers from the endless grant applications and Byzantine peer-review processes that had become a feature of the cash-strapped agency. "The research community was complaining bitterly," says Alain Beaudet, president of the CIHR in Ottawa. "They begged me to make changes." But now that reality is kicking in, many researchers worry that the changes - which modify how grants are awarded, restructure advisory boards and reallocate the money funnelled through the 13 virtual institutes that comprise the CIHR - will marginalize some fields and hurt early-career researchers.