Quite honestly, of all the stupid **** this administration is doing this one doesn't bother me. At least at face value, it is the sort of efficiency I think DOGE "should" be doing more of instead of the "Let's lay everyone off and hope things magically get better."
I think ~ 80% grants are already reviewed through CSR (the "centralized" component). A few ICs have standing sections they run themselves. These are often a hot mess (looking at you NIAAA!) - most of my colleagues do everything we can to avoid our grants going to these panels. The turnover on members is often higher, the reviewers are often less qualified and I've even had them experiment with the review process without warning applicants in advance. I don't have the numbers, but I'm guessing the majority are SEPs run out of institutes for hyper-specific RFAs or unique grant mechanisms.
Now, my fear is that centralizing things is being done for the express purpose of making sure everything flows through a single pipeline and meets political approval. That would be terrifying if true. Otherwise though, this may be an annoyance for a handful of folks in hyper-specific areas that need a few extra submission cycles while they learn to tailor their applications for a slightly different audience, but that's about it.
nihrecord.nih.gov
