Enhancing social value considerations in prioritising publicly funded biomedical research: the vital role of peer review.
| Autor: | Saylor KW; Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA kwsaylor@pennmedicine.upenn.edu., Joffe S; Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Zdroj: | Journal of medical ethics [J Med Ethics] 2024 Mar 20; Vol. 50 (4), pp. 253-257. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Mar 20. |
| DOI: | 10.1136/jme-2022-108883 |
| Abstrakt: | The main goal of publicly funded biomedical research is to generate social value through the creation and application of knowledge that can improve the well-being of current and future people. Prioritising research with the greatest potential social value is crucial for good stewardship of limited public resources and ensuring ethical involvement of research participants. At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), peer reviewers hold the expertise and responsibility for social value assessment and resulting prioritisation at the project level. However, previous research has shown that peer reviewers place more emphasis on a study's methods ('Approach') than on its potential social value (best approximated by the criterion of 'Significance'). Lower weighting of Significance may be due to reviewers' views on the relative importance of social value, their belief that social value is evaluated at other stages of the research priority-setting process or the lack of guidance on how to approach the challenging task of assessing expected social value. The NIH is currently revising its review criteria and how these criteria contribute to overall scores. To elevate the role of social value in priority setting, the agency should support empirical research on how peer reviewers approach the assessment of social value, provide more specific guidance for reviewing social value and experiment with alternative reviewer assignment strategies. These recommendations would help ensure that funding priorities align with the NIH's mission and the obligation of taxpayer-funded research to contribute to the public good. Competing Interests: Competing interests: SJ is a paid member of the Data and Safety Monitoring Board for CSL Behring. (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.) |
| Databáze: | MEDLINE |
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