Dr. Francis Collins and NIH’s senior leadership have published a letter, titled Basic science: Bedrock of progress in Science, reinforcing NIH’s commitment to basic science and introducing a revision to the NIH grant application instructions. The updated instructions aim to ensure that the public health relevance statement in grant applications better reflects the full spectrum of the NIH mission and its commitment to support a robust, diverse research portfolio, including pursuit of basic knowledge.
Full letter: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/1405.1