Reprinted from: "NEJM medical frontier"
Since the establishment of the Department of Medical Sciences by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2009, the application of the National Natural Science Foundation in the field of medicine has been a hot (controversial) topic every year. These disputes mainly focus on "how to declare", "why to declare", "helpless" and "how to rank". In fact, the final result of the debate must be based on personal experience and energy, ideas and interests, ideals and reality. There is no necessity and necessity, only choice and suitability.
For the field of clinical medicine, the core role of NSFC is to enable medical practitioners to obtain a certain degree of scientific research funds through independent declaration and fair evaluation, and focus on one point for in-depth excavation, so as to promote the development of medical science and technology. Let's focus on ophthalmic diseases as an example to talk about the applications of clinicians and other clinical related workers in the youth and general fund of the medical department of the natural science foundation.
1、 To declare natural science funds, we first need to clarify the direction of declaration
In the field of medicine, there are 35 primary discipline codes (h01-h35) and corresponding secondary codes within the framework of NSFC. Although there are many contents, most of them are classified according to the branches of clinical organ system. For example, most of the research related to human ophthalmic diseases are covered in the ophthalmology mouth (H13) of the second Department of the Ministry of medicine.
Under this code, it includes the research fields based on the tissue of the disease, such as h1301 corneal and ocular surface diseases, h1302 lens and cataract, h1303 sclera, uvea, ocular immunity, h1304 glaucoma, optic nerve and optic road diseases, h1305 retinal, choroidal and vitreous related diseases, h1306 vision, optometry and myopia, amblyopia and ocular muscle diseases, H1307 systemic diseases, ocular manifestations and orbital diseases.
As the earliest field of human tissue and organ transplantation, corneal transplantation began in 1905, nearly half a century earlier than kidney transplantation; With the rapid development of regenerative medicine in this century, the first clinical trials of both embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells began in ophthalmology. Therefore, in the field of Ophthalmology, h1308 eye tissue transplantation was set up.
In addition, there are new technologies and methods that are basically set up in other specialties - h1309 new technologies and methods for ocular scientific research. In order to adapt to the new situation of discipline development, the state will also make some adjustments every year, increasing, reducing and adjusting some discipline classifications.
It is worth noting that genetic diseases in various specialties have been classified as H23 medical genetics, such as hereditary eye diseases, which are no longer listed in ophthalmology. Similarly, various tumor diseases in all specialties are also unified into oncology (h18), but tumor related epidemiology, pharmacology, medical imaging, traditional Chinese medicine and blood tumor research are not included. Please carefully read the "application code and precautions" every year to avoid failure of formal review due to code error.
Therefore, selecting the appropriate primary and secondary discipline codes according to the individual's clinical work field is the first step towards success.
2、 Select topics based on personal research experience, foundation and expertise
While choosing the subject code, it is more important to choose the subject. As the saying goes, "a ruler has a weakness and an inch has a strength". The key point of choosing a topic is to "have a skill". Try to choose your own specialty, that is, the so-called "living alone", and the key of "living alone" is the accumulation at ordinary times. In clinical work, clinicians should complete the application for medical ethics review in advance, pay attention to collecting clinical data and materials, and make their own accumulation. In addition to reading published papers, these accumulations also include the basis of preliminary research and the completeness of materials.
For young science fund applicants, they should focus on a small field and direction they are good at, try to be small and precise, and focus on solving a small problem. For example, in the research related to the secondary code h1304 glaucoma of clinical discipline, it can still be divided into optic nerve injury mechanism, intraocular pressure regulation mechanism, genetics and susceptibility genes, treatment and diagnosis methods, epidemiological investigation, etc. these classifications can still be subdivided into smaller directions. When selecting a subject, the applicant should try to choose one of the small directions according to his own advantages and accumulation.
For general fund applicants, they should also focus on a small area and solve a specific problem. The difference between the general fund and the youth fund is that the former has a little more research content, more complex and comprehensive research schemes and research methods, and verifies scientific hypotheses from many aspects and angles.
3、 Research significance and research progress at home and abroad
Clinicians are mainly engaged in the basic and clinical research of clinical diseases. The research significance is relatively simple and easy to write. It is nothing more than the contribution to science, clinical and socio-economic aspects. It will not be repeated here.
The writing of research progress at home and abroad should take into account the progress of both domestic and foreign parts. The general direction in the field does not need detailed writing, but a brief introduction. We should focus on the small areas related to the subject. In writing, we should clarify the current research status in this field, including the latest progress at home and abroad, what important problems to be solved, what problems to be solved in this subject, the basis of scientific hypothesis and project basis, the applicant's important work and contribution in this field, etc.
In the writing of these two parts, we must clearly point out the scientific hypothesis and project basis.
4、 Writing of medical research content, purpose, scheme and technology
Writing in this aspect is easy to be confused. It is easier to understand if it corresponds to English words: objective, aim, design and method. It can be understood that the importance of these concepts is decreasing in steps. The following is the most common scenario:
Objective is the central idea, including a brief description of the problems in the research field and the ideas to solve the problems. Clinicians should focus on diagnosis, treatment and corresponding molecular mechanisms. We should explore, summarize and refine problems from clinical practice, and have a certain preliminary foundation.
Research purpose (AIM): determine the research purpose according to each research content. The purpose of the research must be clear, so as to avoid being too large and vague.
Design: design the corresponding research scheme according to each research purpose. The research scheme must be reasonable and feasible, and should not exceed the ability of the applicant. According to their own accumulation and conditions, the research scheme should be written by selecting one or more parts in vivo (patient specimen, animal model) or in vitro (cell), organ and tissue level (tissue structure and function), cell (cell composition and function) or molecular level (molecular mechanism and signal pathway).
Research method: select appropriate experimental methods and techniques according to the research scheme. The latest or more concerned technologies can be adopted, but they must be "suitable" to avoid decorative meaningless technologies.
The technical route is the summary of the research purpose and scheme in the form of diagram, which should be simple, clear and easy to understand.
The applicant can write these items separately or describe them nested according to his preferences and writing habits.
5、 Writing of preliminary foundation and research conditions
The preliminary foundation involves the applicant's research background and accumulation in relevant large fields (biomedicine and primary disciplines) and small fields (secondary disciplines and small fields of research content). Try to focus on the research basis of small fields, including the results of pre experiment and pre experiment. If the accumulation in small areas is not enough, the accumulation in large areas can be written appropriately. Personal accumulation is not enough. You can write about the accumulation of some teams appropriately. The applicant's achievements in relevant fields can also be displayed in this part.
The research conditions shall include the software and hardware configuration of the applicant and the research group. The hardware facilities shall include the animal room, cell culture room and necessary equipment required for the experiment, as well as the experimental materials, such as animal lines, cell lines, antibodies, patient samples and other key materials and resources.
6、 Key scientific issues, features and innovations
These can be written truthfully and should not be raised too high. In addition, there should be no more than 1 ~ 2 key scientific issues and no more than 3 features and innovations. The review experts will read out the innovation and characteristics of the subject from the previous part.
7、 Several key points of medical tender
1. Problem attributes. There are four options in this part: (1) encourage exploration and highlight originality; (2) Focus on the frontier and find a new way; (3) Demand traction to break through the bottleneck; (4) Common orientation and cross accommodation. Generally speaking, most subjects that prefer basic science and biological science can choose (1) or (2); It is more appropriate to choose (3) or (4) in favor of Applied Science. The majority of applications as medical applicants fall into category (3). Of course, this is not absolute. We should choose according to the characteristics of the subject. Wrong choice will lead to score loss due to different scoring standards. If you are not sure, find someone more experienced to help.
2. Keywords. The selection of keywords is very important. The evaluation system usually selects the corresponding evaluation experts according to the relevance of keywords.
3. Writing style. Scientific and technological writing should be refined and accurate to avoid colloquialism; At the same time, we should avoid simple narrative writing and have our own thinking, viewpoint and "soul".
4. References. Because it is necessary to reflect the latest progress at home and abroad, it is best to quote more references published in recent years, especially the latest of this year. In addition, we should choose to quote influential papers at home and abroad and papers from famous laboratories.
5. Illustrations. There should be some illustrations. Like the illustrations in the paper, pictures are often more concise, vivid and persuasive than words. Illustrations must indicate the source, and those created by themselves without citing the source must indicate "unpublished".
6. Annexes. Necessary and sufficient attachments shall be prepared, such as animal ethics, medical ethics, biosafety guarantee, representative works, recommendation letters, professional title certificates and other important auxiliary materials.
8、 Common misunderstandings and mistakes
1. Pursuing big and complete: a mistake that most people, especially newcomers, often make in writing bids is to pursue big and complete, for fear of failure due to insufficient content and data. However, it often leads to bloated bidding documents and messy logic, resulting in direct poor evaluation; Even if the logic is clear, it will be rejected by the review on the grounds that "there are too many research contents to complete the annual plan".
2. Lack of preliminary basis and preliminary experimental results: the applicant condensed the scientific hypothesis with very good logic from the published papers and biological information analysis. However, due to the lack of preliminary basis support and the verification of preliminary experimental results, the results such as "insufficient research basis" and "insufficient preliminary results to support the hypothesis" were reviewed. In particular, when the applicant applies across fields, he must show enough convincing preliminary basis and results.
3. One sided listing of new technologies: in order to pursue "innovation", it lists the latest technologies in the field, but it does not make clear which characteristics of new technologies are used to solve which specific problems, and does not grasp the early evidence of these technologies, which will only attract the opposite effect.
4. Common sense and literal errors: common sense errors will directly expose the applicant's weaknesses, indicating the lack of accumulation in all aspects, which will often lead to poor comments. The word error gives people a bad impression such as carelessness and insufficient attention, which will also lead to bad comments. The way to avoid it is to find more people to help modify it.
5. Error in formal review: Although all units attach great importance to formal review, about 5% of the bids are still invalid every year because they fail to pass the formal review. The applicant must check each requirement according to the formal review form to avoid low-level errors.