What's the fairest way to allot precious government funds to promising biomedical scientists? In an initiative developed by its outgoing director Elias Zerhouni, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has decided that ensuring a minimum level of support for new investigators should be part of an equitable formula - one that benefits both the investigator and the scientific enterprise. In late October, the NIH made official a policy that has been under review for the past two years. It aims to ensure that grant applicants who have never received NIH funding should have success rates comparable to those who have received NIH funds at least once. The agency will achieve this by routinely funnelling the applications of new investigators into a separate pool initially so that they are not competing with more experienced NIH grantees. For the fiscal year 2009, this translates into at least 1,650 awards to new investigators across the NIH's centres.
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