In terms of the "competitive not discussed" problem --- yes, 💯. I have been talking to a lot of colleagues about this (because my grants also are ending up in this unpleasant space) and everyone agrees that these are the grants that need the most discussion. Some of these reasons include
- these are the grants that are addressing complex special issues that people don't understand and would benefit from the broader expertise on the panel.
- these are the grants where a reviewer made a mistake (such as not understanding the purpose of an R21 😠!)
- these are the grants that have disagreements between reviewers, where one reviewer liked them and one reviewer didn't. Most of these grants are not in this 25%-50% space because all three reviewers think they are a 33% Rather they are often because some reviewers liked it a lot, and a some hated it.*
* Historically, disagreements like this would lead someone to "rescue" the grant for discussion because they wanted a fair review to address the discrepancy. However, over the last decade or so, #NIH has moved from grant review as "provide feedback on the science" to grant review as "order quality for funding decisions", and study section chairs have been asking people "Will this move the grant enough to matter? If not, then do we need to spend the time on it?" Since funding is now at something insane like 5%, people are reluctant to ask study section to spend time discussing a grant to move it from 33% to 20%.
This is also coming from colleagues on study section who observe that study section spends a lot time discussing grants everyone agrees on (particularly at the good-score end).
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