Yup

We're living in a Cormac McCarthy novel. Gotta still carry the fire.

Hell, I'm totally fine with an editor 'ignoring' 3 bad reviews, or requesting more reviews in that case. A bad consensus should not be the goal.

Yup. Totally fine with editors making decisions on say, split reviews, or requests for additional experiments. Reviewers are advisory, not the final word.

Right. "Independent editors are awesome when they ignore the riffraff tanking our papers, but also fuck them for ignoring my pleas for gatekeeping."

absolutely agree but then say THAT. the inability to be careful with our language and arguments is part of what brought us here, as did allying with some bad actors. Being clear about what our primary concerns are make our arguments more compelling and less likely to be manipulated against us

Also super interested if they also apply the same consistency to manuscripts, or if they're okay with editors overriding the advice of the reviewers.

TBF, that's still mostly true with ICs with no paylines, except that the #3 bucket is larger. Look at that NIGMS curve--high likelihood of funding <10%, low >25%. Just a larger grey zone. And NIGMS is socialist, so if you don't get picked up with <10%, it's very likely because you had other funding.

Study sections are also unaware of what other grants are currently funded either by other researchers or to the applicant. Just blindly funding the science that three people thought was cool (because really it’s the three reviewers who largely drive the score), may not be the best use of our money.

Of course, I'm worried about the current admin having completely fucked up priorities. But that's a completely separate issue. Plus, even with strict paylines who is to say that the admin isn't going to fuck with panel composition to get their preferred outcomes anyway.

You are incorrect. Study sections are neither fair nor transparent. Neither are they objective. They suffer systematically from an inherent conservatism. and they are generally unable to produce a balanced portfolio because they do not have that knowledge in front of them.

What I would very much like us to focus on is the nature of these priorities going forward, how they are developed and who is implementing them, instead of yelling about how a thing practiced by about half of the ICs alread is somehow the *structural* issue we should be fighting.

This is also what NIGMS does now.

AI in my experience would have made that sentence more readable.

The intent is clear for those in the know, but that run-on sentence is a hot mess of negatives and poor punctuation. Contrast that with how NIGMS describes essentially the same policy: www.nigms.nih.gov/Research/Pag...

It’s a great example of word salad.