A good return for your money?
Reproduced from Issue 102 of Arthritis Today
Research Committee take a break from their deliberations.
How arc research grants are awarded.
Those who generously donate to the Arthritis Research Campaign should reasonably expect that every pound given will be carefully and wisely spent on achieving the Charity's aims.
How the decisions about research spending are made is something of a mystery to most of our supporters, and what follows is an attempt to explain arc's grant-giving system.
In 1998 we received 360 applications for grants; if all had been supported it would have cost us around £39m, about three times the budget available. In the event only 130 research projects were awarded. How were the grants selected, and were they the right ones?
In deciding how to spend its income, the Arthritis Research Campaign works through a number of specialist committees, with a membership entirely independent of the paid officers of the headquarters staff.
The largest budget is controlled by the Research Sub-Committee which meets three times a year, on each occasion spending a day and a half considering around 80 applications for project and equipment grants. A typical grant recommended by this committee will be in the region of £110,000, which will cover the full-time salary for three years of a trained research worker, probably with a PhD qualification, annual laboratory expenses of around £9,000 used for purchasing chemicals, reagents, tissue culture, DNA testing kits and the like, together with perhaps £5,000 for essential equipment.
Because of the wide range of arthritis research, the membership of the group is made up not only of leading consultant rheumatologists and orthopaedic surgeons, but also experts in scientific fields such as biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology, epidemiology, genetics and even bio-engineering (to advise on projects relating to joint replacements, prostheses and other equipment design.)
The members include some of the most highly respected clinicians and scientists in the country, all of whom give unstintingly of their time while claiming no fees for the countless hours of service during their four-year term of office.
There are separate committees, similarly composed of specialists, who award fellowships, programmes (which can cost up to £1m over five years), academic posts in university medical schools, and educational grants. All of them work to the same principles. To help in reaching decisions, they seek opinions on each application from four or five experts throughout the world, particularly from Europe and the United States. The grant applications outline in very great detail the theory or hypothesis to be put to the test, the scientific experiments which will be carried out, the data or other information to be collected and the methods of analysis to be used for the results.
All of this is assessed very carefully by the experts who look closely at every aspect, often homing in on possible weaknesses. They sometimes require applicants to write letters answering searching questions about their experimental plans or to provide the results of pilot experiments. Only about one application in four survives this rigorous scrutiny.
At the end of the day, two factors determine the success or failure for the application: scientific excellence and relevance to the aims of arc in seeking the cause of arthritis, better treatment for patients and, in the long term, a cure for each of the many rheumatic diseases.
Occasionally committees face the heartache of having to turn down a project at the cutting edge of scientific research because the link with arthritis is too indirect. Equally upsetting is the necessary rejection of a clinical project with apparently many benefits for patients if successful and with a good idea at its centre, when the planned experiments are felt by the expert assessors to be flawed and unlikely to produce entirely valid or reliable results.
All this goes to show that the Arthritis Research Campaign pursues value for money. Some good grants are trimmed back financially when the Research Committee feels that the work can be achieved more cheaply. A request for an expensive item of equipment can sometimes be turned down because someone on the committee knows that the same piece of apparatus is available in a laboratory along the corridor from the applicant's. Every invoice submitted is scrutinized to ensure there are no unjustifiable expenses claims being made.
The emphasis is generally, however, on the positive. Unsuccessful applicants are always sent the comments of the experts – anonymously of course, to maintain confidentiality – and they often come back with much improved research proposals.
After a great deal of extra thought and work, it is not unknown for a persevering applicant to be 'third time lucky.' It is this pursuit of quality which has created the high regard in which the Arthritis Research Campaign is held within the medical and scientific research communities world-wide.
