One message dominates NIH’s talk about ME/CFS research: submit more high quality grant applications. Funding would increase if there were more high quality grant applications.
Give us a chance to prove we’re serious, but send more high quality grant applications.
Thank you for your petition with 50,000 signatures,
but send more high quality grant applications.
In a field desperate for research funding, one might think that ME/CFS researchers would be flooding NIH with grant applications. Yet that
does not seem to be happening. One significant reason why is that NIH’s business-as-usual approach actually increases the barriers to success for ME/CFS grant applications.
A researcher who wants NIH funding for ME/CFS research has to navigate an obstacle course that begins long before the grant application gets in front of reviewers, an obstacle course which arises from NIH’s own broken response to ME. There are at least six questions a researcher must consider in deciding whether to apply for funding:
