Trends in the Use of Promotional Language (Hype) in Abstracts of Successful National Institutes of Health Grant Applications, 1985-2020

Abstract

Key Points Question Has the use of “hype” (promotional language) in the abstracts of successful National Institutes of Health applications increased since 1985? Findings This cross-sectional study of 901 717 National Institutes of Health abstracts from 1985 to 2020 shows that applicants described their work in increasingly subjective terms and relied on promotional language and appeals to emotion (ie, 130 adjective forms identified as hype increased in frequency). Meaning This study suggests that applicants, reviewers, and funding agencies should be aware of the increasing prevalence of promotional language in funding applications.

Trends in the Use of Promotional Language (Hype) in National Institutes of Health Funding Opportunity Announcements, 1992-2020

“…Previous research shows that from 1985 to 2020, the use of hype terms in NIH grant applications increased substantially. 1 This study shows that almost all the same terms (138 out of 139) are also used by the NIH in funding opportunity announcements. In FOAs, from 1992 to 2020, the overall use of these hype terms increased, and, for many individual terms (55 out of 138), the patterns of change are correlated with those in grant applications.…”

“…Among the strongest correlations are those adjectives that increased rapidly and suddenly in popularity (eg, impactful , scalable , sustainable , transformative ), and have been described elsewhere as buzzwords. 1 These results suggest that increase in the use of hype language in grant applications may, in part, be a response to instructions from the NIH. One limitation is that in the context of FOAs some adjectives might not represent hype (eg, scalable, successful, key ).…”

“…A text corpus of all FOAs within the NIH archive 4 was compiled, loaded into the CQPweb corpus analysis system, 5 and searched for the same 139 hype adjectives previously identified in successful grant applications. 1 For each available year (1992-2020), 2 quantitative measures were calculated: (1) the normalized frequency of the hype term (words per million [wpm]); and (2) the percentage of FOAs containing the term (dispersion). To compare longitudinal trends in FOAs with those found in grant applications, superimposed plots of the 2 time series were inspected and cross-correlation analysis was conducted using dispersion of terms in FOAs and normalized frequency in grant applications with a lag of 0 years.…”

“…An article in JAMA Network Open 1 found that in abstracts of successful National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant applications the use of promotional language (hype) increased substantially from 1985 to 2020. As part of the discussion stimulated by the article, the question was raised as to what was motivating this change in language.…”

From Hype to High-Quality Research

“…While effective communication has long been central to the conduct of science, this report by Millar and colleagues 1 highlights how scientists convey the quality-in this case the anticipated quality-of their work. Not surprisingly, scientists believe that their work is and will be of high quality.…”