Getting R01/R21 funded as a computational scientist
As you may have surmised from the subject header, I'm a "dry lab" scientist submitting NIH proposals. I started a few years ago - I've gotten one proposal discussed through one of the ESI mechanisms, and little success on other attempts. One theme in terms of feedback I have received - my approaches are fundamentally "correlative" (not causal) because they lack an experimental component.
I strongly disagree with this. I work in human genetics, and I use databases with hundreds of thousands of whole genome sequences to understand how germline variation predisposes to disease. If done right in terms of the data analysis and study design, I strongly believe this discovers in vivo, human, causal observations about biology. Germline variation is extremely well understood, easy to measure, static throughout the lifetime, and precedes disease longitudinally. Confounding is possible, but if you know what you're doing, it's generally not an issue in 2026.
I don't think the grant reviewers that I've had agree with this. This is consistently true in foundation proposals as well, with my field dismissed as "correlative." From what I gather, this belief is very common as well more broadly in the biomedical research enterprise.
My sense, with slightly less evidence, is that broadly there is a much greater desire for boutique/cool molecular/experimental work in some tiny slice of a problem. Why look at human disease in >100K real humans when we could study a somewhat related phenotype in 3 mice? we could understand these 3 mice very well! My apologies if that was a bit flippant but there's some truth there.
My cynical take is that this belief (human genetics is not causal) is held because if true, it would obviate/diminish many traditional "wet lab" research programs. So best to bury one's head in the sand and write it off as "correlative" or "data mining" or "fishing expedition."
My request for you: I obviously hold some irritation about this, and I would love to be enlightened about why I am wrong. I'd like to be less cynical, and more hopeful. And even better - let me know how I can constructively improve how I think about writing grants.
Burner account. Had to get this off my chest!
Edit: Thank you for your feedback. Many of you are generous with your advice. I don't think I'm going to accept arguments that computational genomics isn't worth funding, but this thread is good confirmation that I need to be more creative with my proposals, and perhaps to give up on mechanisms where my proposals aren't going to a relevant study section.