RESEARCH PROPOSALS ON THE CLINICAL EFFICACY OF ACUPUNCTURE - GUIDELINES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR GRANT WRITING

Feedback is offered to the acupuncture community from two of the 15-member ad hoc panel that, in July 1993, reviewed acupuncture grant applications submitted to the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health. The steps in the scientific review process are summarized to provide an understanding of the general procedures followed for critiquing and scoring the 55 grants. Overall weaknesses in the applications resulted most commonly from lack of experience in grant writing and from difficulties in fitting clinical research on acupuncture into the framework of the scientific method. Thus, insufficient presentation of experimental detail was as frequent a problem as the choice of an appropriate control treatment. Specific issues of clinical research design are discussed and suggestions for improving future applications are presented.