NIH Proposes Big Change In How Grants Applications Evaluated

How The NIH Grant Review Process Has Traditionally Worked

To understand why this would be a significant change, it’s important to understand the role that scientific peer review has played in the NIH grants-making process—which has been significant. When you submit a grant application, that application traditionally has gotten reviewed by a committee of external scientific peers, meaning experts in relevant fields.

In this case, external doesn’t mean that all of these experts sit outside by the lake or some place like that. No, external means outside the NIH and outside the federal government. This was done to prevent politicians and anyone inside the government from having undue influence on what grants get awarded to whom—like grifter type of stuff. It also was done to make sure that those assessing the grant had at least some degree of relevant scientific expertise. The list of scientific peer reviewers for a given grant has usually been made available to the applicant and the public, just like the judges in a sporting competition typically are.

Each of these peer reviewers would then review your grant application and assign it a numerical score—just like Olympic judges assign numerical scores to a figure skater, diver or gymnast after his or her performance in an event. Your final score would ultimately be the composite of such scores. This composite score in most cases would determine whether your application gets funded, assuming that enough funding is available.

Historically, you as an applicant could turn to published thresholds—known as pay lines—for a given NIH Institute, Center or Office—known as an ICO—as to what scores would earn you funding. Comparing your score to the payline would tell you whether you were in the ballpark of getting funding and if not how far away you were. Knowing this difference could help you revise your grant accordingly when it’s time to resubmit or give up entirely and try a different approach.

Again, this is similar to what a figure skater, for example, usually has in the Olympics, World Championships or any other competition. You figure that knowing the score after a performance and what’s needed to earn a medal are pretty darn helpful since this gives not only the athlete but also coaches and fans a good amount of info. Everyone can then adjust their performances, training and expectations based on the gap between their scores and what’s needed. Plus, when do you ever say, “Gee, I’d rather not know my specific score” in anything?

How The NIH Is Proposing To Change The Grant Review Process

Well, the NIH is now proposing to not offer such scores to you as the grant applicant. Instead you will simply see which of the following three overall impact categories your application fell into:

• “Most competitive” (based on the top 25% of final overall impact scores),
• “Competitive” (based on the 26-50% of final overall impact scores), or
• “Not discussed” (scores >50%, or ND)

Now, you may notice the word “scores” above in the short description of each of these categories. Yes, it looks like under this new proposed NIH approach your grant application would still receive scores from the external scientific peer review committee. After all, that would help determine which category your application would fall into ultimately. The main difference is that you won’t be able to see these scores.

Umm, wouldn’t that be a bit like Olympics judges secretly scoring an athlete after a performance but then not revealing to anyone what that score was? Everyone else would then only learn afterwards who won the gold, silver and bronze medals and who finished off of the medal stand without ever knowing exactly why, how close or far anyone was and who else might have been involved in the decision? How’s that for transparency?

Why Is The NIH Proposing Such Changes

Speaking of transparency, the NIH did not make clear why it is even proposing such changes now. It’s not as if the scientific community, patients and others affecting by NIH funding have been clamoring, “Stop giving out these scores” or “We want less information on how grant applications are reviewed” or “More opacity, please.” The NIH announcement simply claimed that these proposed changes were based on a “working group of NIH leaders” that was charged in late 2025 “with recommending changes in how NIH reports out peer review evaluations of scientific merit, to facilitate the Unified Funding Strategy.”

However, the announcement was short on information about this working group and the decision making process. For example, it did not list the members of this working group or any of their backgrounds. Saying “leaders” is sort of like saying “humans” or “beings who may or may not have gallbladders.” How exactly were these leaders chosen and did they truly represent what all of the NIH staff believes?

The NIH scientific peer-review process certainly has been far from perfect historically with numerous scientists including myself offering suggestions over the years on how to improve it. Yet, the NIH announcement did not clearly spell out what was discussed and how this working group came to this scores-no-more decision when in theory it had scores of other ways to change the grant review process. It didn’t even list the different ideas that emerged from the discussion and indicate which ones were “Most competitive”, “Competitive” or “Not discussed,” for example.

The announcement did add that not telling the applicant their scores “aligns with the Unified Funding Strategy which encourages ICOs to actively balance many competing and dynamic factors, including peer review, health priorities, scientific opportunities, the workforce, availability of funds, and the wider research portfolio when determining the most meritorious research ideas to support” and “empower program officials to utilize their substantial expertise, portfolio analyses, and good judgment to make award recommendations that better incorporate ICO strategic plans and NIH priorities.” OK, that’s a lot of unified jargon.

The Proposed Changes Could Allow NIH To Further Disregard Scientific Peer Review

Imagine what would happen if the International Gymnastics Federation— otherwise known as FIG—were to say something similar like “keeping the judges’ scores secret would allow FIG to actively balance many competing and dynamic factors” and “empower FIG to utilize their substantial expertise, portfolio analyses, and good judgment to award medals.” How would gymnasts, coaches and fans take such talk? Would they then wonder whether transparency and fairness would become just FIGments of their imaginations, so to speak, in choosing how the athletes finish?

This proposed change would be consistent with other moves by the Trump administration to reduce the role of scientific peer review in federal funding decision-making and shift more of this power to the U.S. President and his political appointees. This has included the Executive Order issued last year by President Donald Trump that I wrote about in Forbes in August 2025 and the new White House Office of Management and Budget rule that I covered in Forbes this year in July and again in August. Having more power over such grant funding would give the Trump administration more leverage over basically any person and institution that relies on such federal funding, and it’s been using such leverage, as I have described before in Forbes. I’ve been reaching out to different contacts in the federal government for further clarification of all this and this new proposed NIH change and will provide updates accordingly.

The concern is that without clearly indicated scores, decision-making about who does and doesn’t get NIH grants could become a whole lot more opaque and political. Instead of scientific merit, a grant could be funded or not funded purely based on, for example, whether the U.S. President or a political appointee has a particular score to settle. And that could cause scores of other problems for our country.