Getting researchers off the grant treadmill

In the last decade, the NIH has introduced four programs with nontraditional funding structures for high-risk, high-impact projects. Now the National Cancer Institute has followed suit and launched the Outstanding Investigator Award-a generous seven-year award designed to ease the grant-writing burden for selected researchers.

But the institute will need to ensure the program is not just easy pickings for the top labs if it is to have an impact where it is needed most-among up-and-coming researchers...