Goldilocks Grants

The first, second and third reviewers disagree about the merits
of Goldilock's research methodology

Earlier this year Michael Lauer, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Deputy Director for Extramural Research, wrote an interesting blog post examining the productivity of its funding. He looked for a correlation between the amount of funding a project had received and the number of citations it got. This he described as “citations per dollar”.

Such a stark metric had many rolling their eyes, and the comments that followed questioned the underlying supposition. “Numbers of citations rarely correlate with greatest discoveries”, wrote one commentator. “Citation numbers are strongly biased towards fast-moving areas of inquiry”, said another. A third noted that “the number of citations a paper receives is an extremely error-prone measure of scientific merit.”

Nevertheless, I think it’s worth exploring Lauer’s work further for two reasons. First, because it is entirely appropriate for funders to try to assess the most effective use of their limited resources. Second, because the conclusion he hints at runs counter to the current drive by the majority of funders to back larger and longer projects.