Project Pitfalls: Demonstrating Research Consensus
Your team wisely consults the National Institutes of Health Scored Criteria while writing the various sections of your SBIR/STTR grant application. As you work through the prompts, you find yourself easily answering “yes” to each of the prompts, but you know that can’t be all there is to this! You ask yourself “what proof do I need to persuade an NIH reviewer that our project is supported?”
Blue Haven Grant Consultants has over a decade of experience sorting through this type of question. Through our hard-earned experience, we have found that one of the pitfalls of SBIR/STTR grant applications is that applicants tend to keep their responses at too high of a level and that they tend not to demonstrate research consensus when backing up their claims. In this post, we’ll look more thoroughly at the concept of research consensus and how our grant application needs to communicate this effectively to an NIH reviewer reading your grant application.
What Is Research Consensus?
You may be familiar with the advertising trope of “9 out of 10 experts agree” when companies promote their products. In many ways, your SBIR/STTR grant application is making a similar claim. Research consensus is the point at which peer-reviewed research literature points in the same direction regarding the establishment of a problem or the effectiveness of a solution. Unfortunately for us, research literature rarely provides us with a simple “9 out of 10 experts agree” statement at the end of an article. Instead, it is our job as a grant applicant to demonstrate the convergence of evidence and opinions within the scientific community regarding a specific hypothesis, theory, or technological advancement.
Demonstrating research consensus requires equal parts cohesive writing and strategic decision making. When establishing research consensus around the claims in your SBIR/STTR grant application, you may want to consider the following criteria to guide your strategic choices.
Timeliness
New information is not necessarily more correct information, but when we are establishing research consensus, we want to demonstrate we have a strong foundation in the cutting-edge research available to us.
Researcher Diversity
As we are trying to establish research consensus, we need to have a diversity of researchers represented in our search and citing. It is easy for a single research team to reach consensus with themselves, but we are looking for broader consensus in the academic community. We have evidence of this when various researchers and research teams are predominately coming to similar conclusions, citing similar prior research, and making similar claims about the importance of key variables.
Meta-analyses
A strong meta-analysis, which is a study that empirically compares prior research findings, is an immensely valuable piece of research when establishing research consensus. Although these are not the most common type of research, they are invaluable in demonstrating that an effect, theory, or hypothesis is robustly supported across a variety of studies. It is worth the time and energy to seek these out and strategically cite them in the grant application.
Addressing Competing Views
A hallmark of research consensus is when we see research addressing competing findings, theories, and hypotheses. We can feel more comfortable we have research consensus when novel ideas are being compared to the consensus we see and that the consensus idea provides more explanation for the findings of a study than competing ideas. We certainly pay attention to research that establishes a relationship between a treatment and outcome, for example, but we would feel more comfortable when that established treatment is compared to other explanations and the consensus treatment explains more than competing ideas.
Citation Strength
Research consensus also emerges to us when we observe that subsequent studies all start to cite the same few sources. This pattern of citation indicates to us that the research community has consensus that the frameworks and findings of those prior studies are robust and worth building future knowledge from. Research that remains in a silo tends not to indicate consensus; research that is widely cited does.
Of course, each portion of the NIH SBIR/STTR grant application will not necessitate the establishment of research consensus. Perhaps most critically, research consensus needs to be the focus of the significance section of a research grant application. However, BHGC has found that you will not need to establish research consensus for each point that you make. This practice is particularly important for establishing significance and innovation.
Consensus in Significance
One of the critical sections that will rely upon your establishment of research consensus is the Significance section. In this section you will need to demonstrate that there is a research consensus around the problem you are addressing with your innovation.
For example, imagine that you are innovating cancerous tumor detection. As you work on your significance section, you will want to demonstrate that the research strongly supports early detection of the tumor type you are working on is difficult to do and advantageous for the treatment of the tumor. Strong research consensus would consist of several research studies finding that treatment is enhanced when this tumor can be detected early while also demonstrating the difficulty of doing so with current techniques.
Consensus in Innovation
Our experience has been that most grant applicants do a relatively good job of establishing research consensus when working on their significance section but tend not to provide the same thoroughness of backing when discussing their innovation. Research consensus continues to be critical to establish when supporting your innovation. Although your innovation is inherently providing a novel approach to a problem, your grant application should root your innovation to advances in science. NIH reviewers expect innovation that goes beyond mere iterations and/or cost reductions on currently existing approaches. Instead, a strong application demonstrates that the innovation is based on cutting-edge research advancement that points the direction toward your innovation. This is particularly valuable in a Phase I application where you will be seeking funds to establish this research basis as part of your funded work.
Revisiting our tumor detection example, a strong innovation section might demonstrate research consensus around some new finding about the characteristics of a specific tumor that makes it detectable using currently unavailable techniques. Your project could potentially be to develop a technique that reliably uses this discovery to detect the tumor.
BHGC Can Help
Unless you regularly engage with academic research, establishing research consensus in a concise, cohesive, and compelling manner can be overwhelming. With over a decade of grant writing experience, Blue Haven Grant Consultants can help you navigate research consensus and the overall SBIR/STTR grant application process.
As a BHGC client, you’ll benefit from our proprietary Significance-Innovation Analysis™ to narrow down where research consensus needs to be established. It’s just one part of the BHGC Advantage you’ll experience on your SBIR/STTR grant journey with us. If you’re team is ready for a no risk “BHGC Pay Upon Award”™ grant application experience, schedule a free consultation with our team.