{"id":937,"date":"2026-06-23T14:48:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/?p=937"},"modified":"2026-06-23T14:49:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:49:53","slug":"cnd-ennui","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/?p=937","title":{"rendered":"CND Ennui"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone following developments at NIH will be familiar with a new category for disposition of grant proposals following initial review: CND, competitive not discussed<\/strong>. (Flashback for GenXers like me: not to be confused with CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, whence the original peace symbol<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Previously, for most NIH grant review panels, prior to the review meeting applications were placed in two bins based on preliminary scores, with the top half being discussed, and the lower half being not-discussed (ND). As such, when you submitted a grant there was at least a 50% chance it would be discussed in person by a team of 25-30 reviewers (vs. only being seen by 3 assigned reviewers).<\/p>\n

Due to the glut of proposals that were not reviewed during the federal government shutdown in fall 2025, part of the emergency measures<\/a> to relieve the backlog included placing proposals into 3 bins… top 3rd discussed, bottom third ND, and now the middle third CND.<\/p>\n

The CND designation is supposed to take account of more freedom in funding decision making within NIH, such that applications assigned CND could technically still be funded. However, I am not aware (and don’t know anyone else who is aware) of any CND application so far being pulled up for funding. Rather, the net result is that now only 1\/3 of proposals get fully discussed. And there are numerous tales of grants getting discussed and getting good scores, but the funding simply not coming through, so it seems even getting a fundable score is no longer a guarantee that money will be forthcoming.<\/p>\n

So why am I talking about this now<\/strong><\/span>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As luck would have it, the competing renewal application for my long-running R01 grant<\/a> was submitted in November last year and, because of the shutdown, its review was delayed by around 6 weeks from mid February until late March. It ended up in the CND bin, which means we now have to resubmit for the July NIH deadline. Among the review critiques, one reviewer stated that productivity in the prior grant period was strong, while another claimed it was weak – for the record I published 24 papers during this time, when this was my only grant as a PI. The same reviewer listed “studies are mainly mechanistic”<\/em> as a weakness. Also our hypothesis being “mostly based on literature or preliminary data”<\/em> was seen a weakness.<\/p>\n

So here we are in mid 2026, with my current (and only) grant in no-cost-extension, running out of funds rapidly. The lab is running on fumes<\/em>, with only me and a grad student, no technician, no post-doc or other personnel. A 23 year track record of NIH funding about to come grinding to a halt, with no idea how we will keep the lights on a few months from now.<\/p>\n

The silver lining is that since last November we’ve obtained some really cool new data on circadian responses to heart attack that I hope will assuage some concerns of the reviewers.\u00a0 We just have to hope that the resubmission will be properly read, so the message can get through that my lab can still add value to the field.<\/p>\n

Such is life as a researcher in 2026.\u00a0 Sigh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone following developments at NIH will be familiar with a new category for disposition of grant proposals following initial review: CND, competitive not discussed. (Flashback for GenXers like me: not to be confused with CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":941,"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions\/941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psblab.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}