Abstract:
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IDA's Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) was tasked with evaluating the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) high risk, high reward funding mechanism intended to launch promising young scientist's careers and promote innovative research. One part of this evaluation was to compare the extent to which awardee research funded through this high innovation (HI) mechanism was more risky, creative, innovative, and impactful than research produced by a matched-comparison group of awardees funded through the traditional R01 mechanism (Matched R01s).
HIs and Matched R01s were compared using a senior scientist review, whereby experts provided assessments of research outputs for both groups. Seventy-eight experts were each given three sets of journal articles by 87 awardees and asked multiple questions about the impact, innovativeness, and creativity of the papers. These quantitative assessments were analyzed with a Bayesian multi-rater model, and resulting inference concludes that HIs had better overall assessments from senior scientists than the Matched R01s.
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