6 ms·
NIH limits scientists to six applications per year
- throwpoaster 1y agoThe decision criteria for NIH grants should be qualitative, not quantitative.
- stingraycharles 1y agoWell yes but I can completely understand the fears of them being overwhelmed by the amount of things to review. Unless they start using AI on their end to review the quality as well, which I don’t think is the way we want to have things going.
- poulpy123 1y agoWhich is what they still do or at least pretend to do. What they are limiting here is the number of submissions which actually will allow them to spend more time evaluating the quality if they wish so.
- seydor 1y ago(small) quantity is a quality of its own
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- Al-Khwarizmi 1y agoAs a scientist myself, grant proposals are an ideal use case for LLMs: - Massive time sink. Those of us at senior/PI levels devote a lot of time to grant writing, often more than to actual research. - Not something that you really get much useful learning or enrichment from (apart from learning to write better grant proposals the next time). The part of brainstorming and structuring ideas is useful but you would mostly do it without grant writing anyway, all the actual writing and polishing (which is 95% of the time) isn't. Definitely not an efficient use of the amount of hours it takes. - I don't know specifically for NIH, but in my (non-US) context, grant proposals are full of formulaic sections that aren't really useful (Gantt chart, data management plan, etc.) When I'm in an evaluator role, I tend to outright skip many of them, not out of neglect or laziness but because they're just useless ritual fluff. - As a consequence of the above three points, most of us dislike or even hate this part of our work. - The meta for most funding agencies I know has long been to overhype and to use exaggeratedly positive language and takes. Exactly what LLMs are naturals at. - If you're a non-native English speaker and write grant requests in English (common in Europe), the LLM also helps you level the playing field with native speakers, which is quite a big deal. From a naive outside standpoint you might think that scientific grant evaluation is all about the actual ideas and CVs, but the truth is that in practice, ability to pitch your ideas better than other competitors in your call is key. - Honestly in the last grant I wrote, Gemini came up with some paragraphs that I consider to be clearly better than what I would have written by myself. Clear, concise, attractive to read, etc. It's just very good at writing. I'm better than it at the actual research, but at writing, let alone in English where I'm not a native? I don't have a chance. As a result of this... good luck convincing scientists not to use LLMs for this. I'm pretty sure that if you ask, you will find two types of scientists: those that tell you that they use LLMs for grant writing and those who are hypocrites and deny it. I wouldn't even trust a scientist who didn't use LLMs for this (unless it's out of some very deep quasireligious conviction): why waste your time? Don't you want to have more time to do actual science?
- selfselfgo 1y ago[dead]
- jhrmnn 1y ago> useless ritual fluff I believe that LLMs can be very useful to identify this stuff in our processes. The solution shouldn't be then to fill them with LLMs but strip them entirely away. I tend to think the same about everyone freaking out about LLM misuse in education.
- Al-Khwarizmi 1y agoOf course, but identification has never been the problem. You don't need LLMs for that, you could just ask the scientists themselves and I'm sure over 90% of us would agree on the parts I mentioned being useless. The problem is the bureaucracy. And if it asks for useless fluff, I'm happy to feed it with LLMs.
- cturner 1y agoI want to ask about the bureaucracy aspect. I have never written a science grant application, but expect that some of it comes about because the applications want to ensure good governance around the proposals. Do you agree? For the fluff that genuinely has no productive value, do you have any explanation for why it is there? Could LLM participation be blowing holes in good-governance measures that were only weakly effective, and therefore a good thing in the long-term? Could the rise in the practice drive grants arrangements to better governance?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gotoeleven 1y agohttps://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/nih-ending-diversity-statements-grant-applications/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/nih-ending-dive... Crap like this
- gadders 1y agoFrom TFA: "Lauer notes that not long before he left NIH, he and his colleagues identified a principal investigator (PI) who had submitted more than 40 distinct applications in a single submission round, most of which appeared to be partially or entirely AI generated. The incident was “stunning” and “disappointing,” says Lauer, who was not involved in creating the new NIH policy but hopes the cap will discourage other researchers from abusing the system." Always somebody who ruins things for everybody else.
- prasadjoglekar 1y agoIndeed, and failing to name and punish the individuals in question means the rest of profession is now bearing a collective weight going forward.
- jeltz 1y agoWhile I personally do not mind people abusing the system being called out, in this case I am not sure that is an issue. Is there any purpose in allowing people to submit more than six?
- mbreese 1y agoThe process itself can require multiple submissions for the same grant. From my reading of the article, initial submissions, revisions, or renewals will all count as a “submission”. Additionally, if you are part of a collaboration (program project), that will count too. The concern here is that with these caps in place, you’ll see a pull back from collaborative efforts (which are normally looked on favorably). The main gripe isn’t the fact that there is a limit, but rather that the threshold is too low. If you doubled the threshold to 12, I don’t think you’d see much pushback and still be able to limit over submissions. This being NIH, I’m a bit surprised there wasn’t more data presented to show why 6 was a reasonable limit.
- kelipso 1y agoThe real problem seems to me to be that revisions etc. count as submissions and they are not limiting the submissions count to where you are PI. Six PI submissions per year seems plenty enough, though there are some PIs with a crazy number of grad students, post docs, etc. but hey, spread the PI responsibilities to post docs or whatever.
- WillQuinn 1y agoI think its fair that the decision criteria should be qualitative, its just a bummer that its happening at a time with a complicated political environment and dwindling research funds, making it harder for researchers
- tornikeo 1y agoThis reminds me of how I used to have spam-filled email inbox before I switched over to GMail. It almost feels like we are back to that state. There's now a large demand in keeping the context of humans free of AI bullshit. I wonder what the solution to this would look like? Identity-based blacklisting?
- eloisius 1y agoWould it be cynical to think World(coin) is the answer?
- poulpy123 1y agoWhat would a cryptocurrency even provide except more scammers ?
- eloisius 1y agoI’m not saying it won’t, but the entire premise of World is to “authenticate humans online.” Once LLMs have made the dead internet theory a reality, another one of Altman’s companies can provide the solution: only trust content that is authenticated by World to be real, organic, human content.
- arghwhat 1y agoNot cynical, just wrong - yet another identification solution doesn't solve anything.
- jeltz 1y agoI don't think it is the answers but I could definitely see it being intended as an attempt to answer it.
- seydor 1y agoit s not like spammers are anonymous
- Bluestein 1y agoWe are going to end up in a "personal certificate" cryptographically secure ID environment for users ... ... and everybody else is going to be assumed to be a software system.- PS. Even worse (better): Your agent is going to be cryptographically bound to your identity.-
- krallistic 1y agoSeems like a band-aid solution for a broken system. But in general science will have to deal with that problem. Written text used to "proof" that the author spend some level of thought into the topic. With AI that promise is broken.
- paulluuk 1y agoThe question is: is AI breaking the system, or was it always broken and does AI merely show what is broken about it? I'm not a scientist/researcher myself, but from what I hear from friends who are, the whole "industry" (which is really what it is) is riddled with corruption, politics, broken systems and lack of actual scientific interest.
- jeltz 1y agoEveryone even remotely close to the system knew that this was broken and this is just bandaid. More fundamental changes would be needed to fix this.
- raphman 1y ago"Broken" is a spectrum. Adding rapid-fire AI exacerbates the existing problems and makes it harder to fix them.
- miltonlost 1y agoYeah, a single drip of water leaking out of a pipe is "broken" but is substantially different than a deluge flooding out constantly.
- strangescript 1y agoI was literally typing band-aid when I scrolled down. Many systems are going to have to come up with better solutions to the problems AI will pose for legacy processes.
- RhysU 1y agoIt's going to be really funny when the NIH eventually sits down the professors, hands them blue exam booklets, and makes them write proposals in freehand.
- d4rkn0d3z 1y agoThis seems like a good example of a more general issue; when you have a machine that produces bullshit mixed with gem-like phraseology, at a pace that we cannot possibly match as humans, we may be faced with intellectual denial of service attacks.
- maratc 1y agoThere was a natural barrier of investing time into writing the proposal. This barrier is clearly broken now. A different barrier could be money that people submitting grant proposals would need to pay. First grant proposal could be $0, second $1, third $10, fourth $100, etc.
- nness 1y agoOr more limited in impact — flag people who are behaving outside of the norms for manaul review, i.e. too many or too frequent submissions. Manual review and if any are found to contain AI, assume all are AI, and charge only that person a fixed proposal review fee going forward.
- maratc 1y agoThat would need a clear definition of what "too many" or "too frequent" mean. Every time this definition is changed, you'd need to retroactively apply the change. Changing the "person" would circumvent this. My idea doesn't involve any of that -- you want to submit 10 proposals? $111,111,111 please.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoThe "if found to contain AI" part will possibly become harder and harder to detect over time, at which point you have to assume all entries could be AI, and flagging or making them pay a review fee would become the standard. But it's similar to emails, under water your e-mail account has a 'trust score' based on previous behaviour, domain, etc. It could also come from the other side, if a scientist is attached to a university or other research body, they should sign off on a declaration that AI was not used (or used but clearly marked as such), with a big fine and reputation damage for the university if their researchers violate it.
- nxobject 1y agoWhere did the 6 application/year number come from? The justification seems a little fast-and-loose: > According to the new notice, the number of PIs who submit more than six applications per year is “relatively low.” I imagine that, given funding cuts, PIs are going to try to work harder to find funding opportunities (i.e. more proposals submitted) for insurance.
- sampl3username 1y agoAnother "gift" from AI to the world. Another line to the long list of "minor side effects" from uncontrolled, unapollogetic corporations releasing radical technology into a world that didn't agree to it.
- chvid 1y agoBut AI can fix this.
- spwa4 1y agoAre you seriously blaming corporations for advancing science and how bad and inconvenient that is for some people?
- sampl3username 1y agoYes I do indeed think companies should not be able to vastly reshape the world at will.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoTBH it was already possible before, but you'd need to either write templates or find competent low-cost ghostwriters. AI has made it easier and more accessible to do this kind of thing. I wouldn't be surprised if the institutions or projects like CURL will create harsher measures to stop this flood of high-quality spam, like putting people on a list or requiring payment per submission. I mean that last one isn't a bad thing, Apple did something like it years ago and I think asking for an upfront cost and having a strict (at the time) review program made it so that all apps were from serious developers and met minimum quality standards.
- b112 1y agoOne of the issues here, is trust. If I write anything, and put my name as the author, I'm 100% lying if I am just copy pasting text. This holds true 10 years ago, if I copied in any text without attribution. A novel, a book, a grant app, a paper, whatever. Just because you're now copying large swaths of text from an LLM, doesn't make it better than copying from a person, eg plagiarism. And if you took a person's text 10 years ago, and modified a few words out of thousands, yes, that'd be called plagiarism too. (No, a spell checker isn't that. It's correcting your word for the same word. If you think spellcheckers are the same as whole paragraph insertion, please check your ethics meter, it's broken.) If the work isn't yours, you need to say so. Otherwise you're being dishonest. If people get upset at the notion of disclosing, that feels like guilty behaviour. Otherwise, why not disclose? Now, taking a step back? We're in a period of transition. I agree that vast imbalances are being created here. This is the true problem. For example, an application process could state "LLM applications are fine", or not. Instead? The current is "no" without clearly saying so, for obvious reasons (it's copying work you didn't write, as your own ... plagiarism), but any such "no" without a high incident of detection and punishment, is worse than anything. The 6 applications seems like a cop out, although it is logical. It should also be coupled with a "OK you win, use LLMs" statement too. On another note, soon there will be two types of people, and only one of which I will engage in thoughtful email/text communication with. Those who use LLMs, and people worth talking too. Of what value is any meaningful conversation, if the other person's response is an LLM paste? Might as well just talk to chatgpt instead. (note, I'm talking about friendly debate among friends or colleagues. Seeking their opinion or vice versa.)
- seydor 1y ago> I'm 100% lying if I am just copy pasting text. I disagree. It's like doing collage art with text. Like using samples to make music. We are already in that era of collating text and images and video from AIs. We should learn to embrace
- addicted 1y agoI can't speak to whether the 6 applications is the correct number, but it seems like a reasonable first pass to apply some limit as long as the NIH is closely monitoring this and modifying the restrictions as needed.
- Balgair 1y agoI'm curious for an economist's take here. It seems to me that the incentives are such that now you've just guaranteed that all PIs will now submit 6 applications every year. It may be less that what you originally were seeing, but I don't know the population stats. It also may be that you've now poisoned all the other grant agencies (NSF, etc) and they'll soon have to have maximums too.
- randomizedalgs 1y agoFor perspective, the CS programs in the NSF already have a two-submission limit per year [1]. Besides reducing the incentive to spam, this rule has had another positive effect: As a researcher without funding, you don't have to spend your whole year writing grants. You can, instead, spend your time on actual research. With that said, NIH grants tend to me much more narrow than CS ones, and I imagine that it takes a lot more grants to keep a lab going... [1] https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/computer-information-science-engineering-core-programs/nsf24-589/solicitation https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/computer-informati...
- elehack 1y agoDescribing this as a limit on "CS programs" is a common, but erroneous, understanding of the proposal limit. This specific solicitation — CISE Core Programs — has a 2-proposal-per-year limit. However, that only applies to this solicitation, and only counts proposals submitted to this solicitation. CISE Core Programs is an important CS funding mechanism, but there are quite a few other funding vehicles within CISE (Robust Intelligence, RETTL, SATC, and many more, including CAREER). Each has its own limits, that generally don't count or count against the Core Programs limit.
- n20benn 1y agoThe same is happening in the Computer Security academic research realm. All of the four top conferences (USENIX Security, ACM CCS, IEEE S&P, and NDSS) have instituted a submission cap--you can't have your name on more than 6 papers being submitted in a given cycle. This has all happened within the last year, likely due to the same GenAI abuse that puts undue burden on PC reviewers.
- jasonhong 1y agoHaving been on the program committee for some of these conferences, this issue of limiting number of submissions was being discussed long before GenAI. Specifically, there was talk of a few highly prolific security researchers that submitted 15-20 papers to these conferences each cycle, with pretty good quality too.