Only a few of us will reap the benefits of this money - out of the more than 10,000 applications expected I am told by a reliable contact at NIH that only 200-500 grants will be awarded. Most of the 10,000 or so applicants will spend the coming weeks writing in vain as we struggle to make the April 27 deadline. Those that do succeed will have only 2 years to produce results, as opposed to the more typical time frame of 4-5 years afforded by the R01 funding mechanism.
The areas for funding are broad and are defined by short descriptions. I can assure you that there are thousands of cases in which faculty are trying to stretch and bend their research to fit into one or more of the available funding topics. You could very easily argue that the blame goes to the faculty that try to grasp fruit that is out of their reach. However, I would liken these grants to dangling a juicy rib eye in front of a starving tiger.
With NIH money (in the form of new R01 grants) being restricted in the form of lower and lower pay lines, it is becoming harder and harder for young faculty to achieve their goal of obtaining funds to drive their research. This trend has changed the landscape of academic research over the last 10 years. It is now an even more fierce battleground than ever before and I believe that the younger generation of scientists are the ones going hungry. Perhaps the economic stimulus money could have been used to simply lower the bar a little allowing more of those who have been struggling to get funded to finally cross the funding threshold. I do see the benefit of the challenge grant to the economy - immediate spending over a short term of 2 years. But how much will this short-term gain cost our scientific community? Time will tell.
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