This news may well not surprise you, but the extent of it is interesting. A new study has looked at NIH grant applications from 1985 to 2017 and found that the use of hyped-up descriptions such as “novel”, “critical”, and “key” has increased strongly over this period. Particularly buzzy adjectives have shown paticularly huge rises: “sustainable”, “actionable”, and “scalable” are one to two hundred times more common than they used to be. These results are right in line with other such surveys of the scientific literature, which have shown an increase in both positive and negative wording over the years. The good stuff is better, and the bad stuff (done by those other guys, presumably) is worse.
And buddy, everything is novel, unprecedented, transformational, and whatever else you can think of, because apparently people are scared that if it isn’t then no one is going to come across with any grant money. Who could blame them? I grew up in farming country, and the one thing that you can count on when talking with a farmer is that there is something to be concerned about with the weather this year. It’s too dry, too wet, too sunny, too cloudy, too cold or (increasingly these days, of course) too hot. Similarly, you can always ask an academic scientist “How’s the funding environment?” and be pretty sure of a lengthy and heartfelt response.
They’re not putting on a performance, either, because there is a finite amount of research money out there and a constantly increasing number of people interested in getting some of it. So it’s not suprising that there has been inflation in the descriptions of the work in an attempt to stand out from the rest of the crowd. But when the rest of the crowd is all doing something groundbreaking and novel, what then? If the salt hath lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? The only answer is to continue to make things spicier, in an endless ratcheting climb.
Reading the results is enough to make you want to consider switching to long-haul furniture moving instead. Here’s one bit quoted in that Stat article; see if it doesn’t make you look out the nearest window and reassess your options:
This objective will be accomplished via provision of effective scientific and administrative leadership; development of efficient, innovative core facilities; recruitment of funded, committed investigators; promotion of interdisciplinary approaches and interactive projects; and promulgation of communication, education and training. . .
Imagine having to write that! Actually, imagine having to read that, over and over, and to decide which of these folks you’re going to give money to. I just couldn’t do it. I’ve always had a low threshold for that sort of linguistic packing material, and I’ve only become more impatient with it as the years have gone on. I would guess that the people that do have to read all these grants just skip over all that tinsel anyway, right? “Oh look, this one’s novel and unprecedented, put it in the priority review pile” No, there’s no way that anyone can be paying real attention to this language, but perhaps things just don’t look right if it isn’t there? Especially since granting agencies themselves seem to be using the exact same sorts of adjectives when describing the sorts of research proposals that they’re looking to fund. . .
