The NIH recently issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement to solicit grant proposals, “to define molecular and cellular targets in the brain for the effects of alcohol” at low doses. Reactions to the announcement have been mixed within the alcohol research community, but we strongly support the need for this FOA, in part because of our perception that journals now feature a profusion of studies that report effects of alcohol at very high levels. This raises the likelihood that many such studies are reporting on effects of alcohol that are epiphenomena; this is to say, the observed effects of alcohol are real (certainly within a laboratory setting), but may not be biologically relevant to the pharmacological actions of the drug in animals and humans at levels that are relevant to social intoxication. While revising this review, we were reminded that a similar climate prevailed in the 1990s, so clearly this is not a new problem for the field [see the mini-review by Deitrich and Harris, 68]. All of the points made so clearly in the earlier commentary continue to ring true
