Jeremy Berg (@jeremymberg.bsky.social)

@jeremymberg.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 10:37 PM

Good point on the peer review plan.

Read and comment. Two more days.

27unihted.substack.com/p/how-to-com...

@joshuasweitz.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 10:30 PMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

The NIH proposal to conceal reviewer scores from program officers, investigators, and advisory councils is ill-conceived, introduces disproportionate weight to small percentile differences, diminishes the role of scientific peer review, and should be withdrawn in its entirety. a 🧵

@genelisadaily.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 7:47 PMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

@in-otter-news.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 8:00 PMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

Steve is annoyed with me and I don't even know why!

A color photograph of Steve the otter leaning on a burlap-covered edge, winking one eye and sticking out his tongue.
No text appears in the image.

@9kittens.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 1:19 PMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

Me Too💙💙🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊

@jeremymberg.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:21 PM

6/6

Rather that embarking on this reckless disruption of the peer review and application-funding processes, NIH leadership should simply put processes in place to empower program staff and advisory council members to provide advice about applications that should be given higher or lower priority for funding decisions. The eventual funding decisions could be compared to overall impact scores to monitor how successful these empowerment efforts were. NIH should also require documentation of applications that received very good peer review scores but were not funded. This transparent process would be vastly better than the proposed obfuscation of valuable information when working to decide how to invest valuable taxpayer resources.

@jeremymberg.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:21 PM

5/6

Every application with a conceivably fundable score was considered for potential funding. Peer review scores played an important role but input from program staff and advisory council members was used to identify applications that were flagged as high or low priority for funding based on alignment with key aspects of the institute and NIH missions, other resources available to the applicant, career stage, and other factors. This decades-old established process is essentially the "new" unified funding strategy. Some other institutes did use hard paylines, but even in these cases, a substantial amount of funding, typically 20%, was set aside for funding beyond the payline.

@jeremymberg.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:21 PM

4/6

Second, not sharing this information with applicants, program officers, advisory council members, and institute and center directors is an extremely poor idea. This would eliminate a large amount of the information associated with peer review while not addressing any issues that cannot be addressed through other approaches, many of which have been in place for decades. My analyses demonstrated that there were meaningful differences in productivity including high impact results from the highest scoring proposal compared to lower scoring ones and this may not be evident from comments alone. From well before my time at NIGMS, the institute did not use a payline.

@jeremymberg.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:21 PM

3/6

The current proposal has two major flaws. First, having only three bins. only two of which are relevant for fundable proposals, largely undermines the peer review scoring process. Binning scores at some level makes sense, but having only 2-3 bins is clearly inadequate. Nine bins, as was the original goal, would capture the statistically meaningful information from the merit review conducted by study sections while binning with 2-3 bins would discard important information.

@jeremymberg.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:21 PM

2/6

I served as Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) from 2003-2011. In that role, I performed some of the first analyses of the relationship between peer review impact scores and subsequent scientific productivity. I also co-chaired the NIH-wide committee that led to the overall impact score on the 1-9 scale. This scale replaced the 100-500 scale that had been used for many years prior. A major goal was to reduce the false precision associated with scores.

@jeremymberg.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:21 PM

Please comment on "Request for Information (RFI) on Proposed Changes to Reporting Outcomes from NIH Peer Review" by Tuesday (October 13th, 2026).

rfi.grants.nih.gov?s=6a2b1c22c3...

Here is my comment:

1/6

@jeremymberg.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 1:11 PM

Done. My ballot went in a few days ago. Waiting for online confirmation that it was received and processed.

@leahlitman.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 12:02 PMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

VERY important point from my colleague Sam Bagenstos - the 2026 Senate races will determine the future of the Supreme Court and federal courts more broadly. Which means the 2026 Senate race in MICHIGAN could determine the future of the Supreme Court

@michaelemann.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 12:06 AMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

Perk of being in the same American Academy of Arts & Sciences class as Jodie Foster -- yes, we talked about Carl Sagan, Contact (and my friend Bill Nye)

@donmoyn.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 1:05 PMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

Fetterman does not seem to like his job, the biggest city in his state, or his governor. He does like spending time online and going on TV.

Anil Kalhan@akalhan.bsky.socialOct 11, 2026, 12:58 PM

"Fetterman largely holes up in his Capitol office, lying on the couch and scrolling Apple News, several former staffers said. "'Every day was a battle that by the end of the day you were physically and emotionally battered just by getting John to do any part of his job,' a former staffer said...."

share.inquirer.comHow John Fetterman spends his time comes under more scrutiny as he weighs future in the SenateThe Pennsylvania Democrat has been labeled an absentee senator for years. As he floats the possibility of running again, what has he actually done?

@gifs-of-puppets.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 1:06 PMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

Today's #TheMuppetShow GIF of the Day is...

@miskaknapek.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 11:31 AMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

#datavis #datascience

Excellent scrollytelling piece (below)

@somersetgoldens.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 10:42 AMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

Feeding time at the O’Neills … 💛🐾💛🐾💛🐾

@rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 10:57 AMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

9 months old baby horse sees sea for the first time

Repost of @AllInteres16786:

Original post

@peiferlabunc.bsky.social Oct 10, 2026, 11:58 AMReposted by @jeremymberg.bsky.social

Here is the REAL winner of the Nikon Small World in Motion after the AI Monstrosity was removed
www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...