International panel slams CIHR handling of major changes
An international panel of experts has criticized the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for failing to properly carry out major reforms — something it says eroded trust between the funding agency and researchers, “which must now be rebuilt.”
The International Peer Review Expert Panel also said underfunding for science research contributed to the furor surrounding grant system reforms at CIHR.
“We speculate that if funding were not an issue then the underlying nature of the reforms would have been more acceptable to the research community.”
The panel recommended that the federal government increase the CIHR budget. But its recommendation could be superseded by a long-awaited report about federal funding for basic science that is expected soon.
The federal government commissioned the review of fundamental science last summer.
The report by the panel headed by David Naylor, former president of the University of Toronto, was to have been released by the end of last year.
It contains a “big ask” — which could be in the form of a major funding request to better support scientific research — sources have told the Citizen and, because of that, will likely not be released until after the federal budget, March 22.
Depending on what it says, Naylor’s report could significantly change the health research funding landscape in the country.
Meanwhile, the country ’s major health research funding agency has been the focus of growing frustration among scientists. The federal health-research funding agency has been under fire for months over its handling of a series of major changes, notably to the peer review system that determines who receives grant funding.
Last summer, after more than 1,300 scientists wrote to Health Minister Jane Philpott asking her to delay the “badly-flawed” reforms, CIHR agreed to rethink some of the changes.
The International Peer Review Expert Panel Report, which had been mandated to look into the peer review system, criticized its implementation, but largely supported CIHR’s vision for changes, saying it believes the reforms “as originally envisaged” were generally in the right direction, even innovative.
“However, there were a series of significant implementation failures, compounded by ineffective engagement with the research community that undermined confidence in, and execution of, the proposed reforms.”
There was an overall success rate of just 13 per cent last year for the CIHR’s Foundation Grant and Project Grant programs.
The international panel’s first recommendation was that the federal government increase investment in health research.
Dr. Jim Woodgett, director of research of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, was among the scientists who spearheaded the protest over CIHR reforms. He noted the report was critical of the way CIHR reforms were implemented. “They didn’t mince words.”
But Woodgett said he was disappointed that the report did not offer more support for faceto-face
If funding were not an issue then the underlying nature of the reforms would have been more acceptable to the research community.
meetings as a key part of peer review. A major concern for many scientists was the move away from face-to-face peer reviews for grant applications toward a virtual review system in which reviewers were not online at the same time, a change critics said distorted and diminished the system of selecting the best applications for funding.
Bill Tholl, president and CEO of HealthCareCAN, a national organization representing healthcare organizations, called the expert panel report an important step “in trying to rebuild trust and excellence in the health science community.”
Tholl called the recommendation to increase the CIHR budget “an important acknowledgement that insufficient funding can often lead to a myriad of other problems.”
Tholl said his organization and CEOs from the country’s leading research hospitals are hopeful there will be more money in the federal budget for health research funding.