Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up

“NIH Grant Success Rate Improves” lacks a longer-term perspective (C&EN, Jan. 12, page 6). Until the period of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, success in peer review was the only critical factor in the awarding of National Institutes of Health grants each year. One hundred percent funding of approved grants was the standard.

Right around the time of the 1966 publication of Richard Fariña’s novel “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me,” so-called off-book federal funding of the conflict in Vietnam was a major factor in forcing a round of administrative review to determine what reduced level of funding of approved grants would be possible each year. Even a closer look at the bar graph in the C&EN article for the years 2006 and 2007 shows how transient an apparent “improvement” can be in this continuing post-Vietnam era.

Robert M. Hadsell
Plano, Texas