In this paper, the frequency of “hype” adjectives in abstracts of successful national institutes of health (NIH) grant applications are analyzed. First, all adjectives are extracted from the abstracts, and they assess the frequency in the most recent year, 2020, relative to the start year, 1985. Then they manually coded the adjectives as “hype” and “nonhype” adjectives, and identified 139 “hype” adjectives.

Of the 139 “hype” adjectives, 130 increased in frequency between 1985 and 2020 and 9 decreased. In 1985, 72% of NIH abstracts contained 1 or more of these hype adjectives, in 2020 this increased to 97% of abstracts. The hype adjectives with the largest absolute increases are novel, critical, key, innovative and scientific, and with the highest relative increases: actionable, transdisciplinary, scalable, transformative, and impactful.

The authors speculate on the role of NIH advise to applicants on the increase of hype adjectives in the abstracts. The advice is “reviewers will pay particular attention to the likely overall “impact” of the proposed work and will specifically score proposals on the criteria of “significance” of the work, appropriateness of the “investigator(s)”, “innovation”, the appropriateness of the “approach”, and the quality of the research “environment.”

This is study differs from other studies on promotional language in science in two ways. First, they focus on research grants instead of research articles. Second, their list of hype adjectives are extracted from their data instead of based on a predetermined list.