Two or three times a year, principal investigators closet themselves in their offices for about a month to prepare grant applications for National Institutes of Health (NIH) or similar agencies to ensure funding. It is no longer research as usual but rather a feverish production of pictures, graphs and preliminary experimental data to be incorporated into proposals to make them more attractive. It is a matter of life and death because, somehow, NIH awards have become not only the icing on the cake as was originally intended, but the entire cake.

The National Institutes of Health had a rather humble beginning as a bacteriological laboratory "for investigating the origin and causes of epidemic diseases, especially yellow fever and cholera" in 1878. As is typical for all pre-cancerous lesions, the early stages of NIH evolution were rather benign until the creation of the Research Grants Office within NIH in 1946. This office was charged with administering a program of extramural research grants and fellowship awards, with multiple study sections for review of research grant applications. Today, NIH is a monstrously big and complex organization that controls every facet of scientific activity (and, incidentally, livelihood of all scientists) in the United States through awarding or withholding funding for research, presumably, based on merit determined by peer review.

It would appear to be a solid concept but for a few deepening wrinkles here and there. The scientific community has several self-imposed checks and balances that ensure quality control of research. One of the most important is a peer review process utilized at multiple levels all the way up to publications. There is, however, a fundamental difference between judgement of the research that has already been done and the research that is at the stage of planning.

In the first case, the reviewers evaluate compliance criteria for proper experimental strategy, design and techniques. In most instances, the expertise of reviewers is sufficient to detect inconsistencies and poorly or fraudulently executed studies. Depending on the journal, there may be some additional less tangible and, therefore, less disputable criteria like “appeal to the broad scientific audience”, which are generally shamelessly used by high impact journals to toss out a majority of submissions without proper review. Nonetheless, despite all its shortcoming and clear potential for abuse in favor of few “elite” institutions, this form of review is essential. Peers are unquestionably necessary as the Guardians of the Present who maintain and enforce high standards of rigor and reproducibility in scientific experiments.

On the other hand, the NIH peer review process, although superficially identical, is very different and inherently malignant because NIH panels judge the ideas for future research although it is not made obvious. The significance of a proposal may be deemed low with, naturally, disastrous consequences. The study can be found wanting sufficient innovation and, therefore, tossed out. The study can be called ”descriptive”, “pedestrian” or “overly ambitious” with equally negative connotation. If the applicant is not an independent researcher, it may also be considered a sufficient reason for rejection. Applicant may also easily stumble on “approach” or blamed for insufficient experience with certain techniques. In other words, plenty of things may and do go wrong in the eyes of the reviewers. The percentage of approved proposals is ever shrinking and now only about 15-20% of grant applications receive funding.

All reviewers are highly educated scientists, current recipients of grants, experts in their respective fields etc..etc.. There is nothing wrong with these people at all, except that they are commissioned to guide future of Science – a task for which none of them is and, indeed, nobody can possibly be qualified. As it stands now, the priorities for allocation of scientific efforts are determined by small groups of experts (proposals are usually evaluated by “troikas”) who essentially pass a verdict on what is important and what is not. Sure, these people are reasonably intelligent and can make a sound judgment in their fields of expertise, that is, within mainstream conceptual framework. Fundamentally, however, they are by no means intelligent enough to predict or – worse - direct science. Whether directed by peers or not, Experimental Science is almost always short-sighted because in most cases it can ask the Great Unknown only incremental questions. Regarding future discoveries and where will they come from, the experts can be safely considered legally blind. Ironically, many of current reviewers are, in a sense, diligently digging their own graves because most of their own grant applications will be inevitably axed (as “descriptive” , “overly ambitious”, or “not innovative”) in the near future by new diligent ones who will come next. The situation is rather interesting, to say the least. While I am sure that most participants have a sense of noble purpose, the system arising from their efforts works against it.

In its website, NIH claims credit for all successes of the American Science although there is no evidence that achievements would be any worse without its interference. In fact, there are indications that America might have done better because out of 45 of US-located Nobel Prize Winners, 16 did not get any NIH funding for work that won them the Prize (Mathews et al., 2011). Considering criteria utilized by NIH, the applications of these unfunded future laureates were probably either “overly ambitious”, or mere “fishing expeditions”, or they themselves were labeled as “not independent”, who knows?

These days, the process of applying for grants has become so complicated and uncertain that NIH offers courses and seminars on how to apply and make the reviewers like your proposal. Apparently, the beast grew too large and untamable. Scientists, therefore, need to learn new skills to sell their work and ideas to survive. The most natural question is “why”? They are not in the advertisement business, and, as sales people, most scientists are not good at all because this is not what they were born to do. The next most natural question is “Does it help to make Science better”? Definitely not! All it does is to unpredictably cut or increase funding for some directions of research or laboratories for reasons that are based on vague assessments which are impossible to dispute logically. This creates an atmosphere of insecurity because any lab (except those who belong to de facto distributors of money) can find itself on a precipice at any time. My own University is full of ghosts - faculty members who failed to secure continuous funding from NIH or similar agencies and had to downsize or close their laboratories. Unpredictable ebbs and flows of grant money kill continuity of research, cause high turnover rate of highly trained specialists and, frankly, make science a rather unattractive career choice for talented youth.

This is not all, however. This system unleashes a truly terrible evil that threatens the very existence of objective science. Because the academic career and livelihood of a contemporary scientist depend on whether he or she gets funded – there is a grim necessity to produce results that would confirm preliminary findings or a concept; or else. It should be noted that we still know very little and that most of our ideas are bound to be wrong because the object of our studies – life - is the most complicated thing in the universe. Being wrong is lethal in contemporary science because it does not bring money and, therefore, it is a luxury that nobody can afford. Researchers have families to feed, mortgages to pay off, and lifestyles, however miserable, to maintain. This necessity puts scientists in untenable position – forcing many, if not all, to be more or less selective when evaluating an experimental data.

Now, let’s try to imagine a scenario without NIH-style system of funding. What if the federal money goes directly to the Universities and Research Institutes (approach utilized in many countries) without any strings attached? Will scientists and science perish without NIH, without anyone telling them what’s right and what’s wrong and which directions of research are worth pursuing and which ones should-not-be-even-contemplated? There is every reason to believe that scientists will manage just fine. Moreover, freed from suffocating regulations and the need to beg for money again and again, Science will flourish while costing considerably less. Researchers will know that their positions are secure and that they can conduct unbiased research on the topics THEY find interesting. Their work will be subject to a classical peer-review quality control, of course, but without anyone judging what they can and cannot think or do. And the academic career will be based not so much on eloquence, ivy league connections and the money wrestled from NIH but on a quality of research and impact of publications.

For the sake of American Science, NIH and the likes must go!