This newsletter is intended to complement the work of CIHR's University Delegates, who already act as a valuable liaison at the local level between CIHR and the research community in many universities. Many of the Delegates publish electronic newsletters or forward CIHR announcements to their local community, and all take part in a monthly teleconference with senior CIHR staff. If you have an issue or an opinion about a CIHR program or policy, I encourage you to discuss it with your Delegate who can raise it at the next teleconference. If you do not have a delegate at your University, and would like one, please let me know.
I'm writing this a few minutes after the announcement of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren of Australia for their discovery of "the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease". Besides being a wonderful example of the impact that research can have on seemingly intractable health problems, the Prize is richly deserved because, to quote the press release, the winners "with tenacity and a prepared mind challenged prevailing dogmas". Despite the frequent criticisms of peer review as a device to preserve dogmas, this revolutionary new view of the pathology of gastric ulcers was accepted and published in a prestigious peer-reviewed publication, the 'Lancet' (Marshall BJ, Warren JR. Lancet. 1984 Jun 16; 1(8390):1311-5.)
I would hope that, if Marshall and Warren had been working in Canada, and had submitted an application to CIHR for funding, the importance of their initial findings would have been recognized by the peer review committee, and their application rated highly enough to be funded. My point is that CIHR's peer review system must recognize and reward the unorthodox ideas and concepts that will produce breakthroughs in improving the health of Canadians. At its August Retreat, CIHR's Governing Council examined the criteria that CIHR peer reviewers use to assess applications, and concluded that it was time to modify them, and to place greater emphasis on novelty of ideas and innovation in approach, and on the potential impact of the proposed research. The key question to ask the reviewers is how the research project will change our understanding of human biology or behaviour, improve clinical practice, increase the efficiency of the health care system, influence social policies that affect health, or affect the many other outcomes from health research. In collaboration with the members of CIHR's review committees, we will be taking advice about the changes we should be making in the criteria for evaluation of applications, and the way in which they are applied in the review process, and testing them in some pilot projects with volunteer committees. I'd like to be sure that CIHR never turns down applications from future Canadian winners of the Nobel Prize.
I now invite you and your colleagues to subscribe directly to the 'CIHR E-Alert: News for Researchers'.
Mark A. Bisby, M.A., D.Phil.
Vice-President, Research Portfolio
