An observation for those reading along with a comment thread that is developing on a prior post. Gummibear asserted:

I also have to add that the quality of the NIH peer review system needs an external audit. Things that are going on there are quite unimaginable in journal peer review.

It emerged that our commenter was ticked about a grant review. Surprise, surprise.

Like regularly writing utter nonsense in summary statements, with complete impunity. An example from my recent experience: a reviewer was unfamiliar with the field and wrote a whole critique full of rubbish. He/she 'luckily' went too far and devoted a paragraph to certain methodology, expressly describing my use of it as 'strange'. It was then easy for me to provide a list of literature references to identical approaches and prove that the 'strangeness' resulted solely from the reviewer's state of mind and education. So I did in an appeal.

There is a little more detail but really it is going to be hard to evaluate the specific claim of mistreatment outside of going through the grant app and critiques ourselves. Nevertheless, I like to look for the general points. I arrive at this:

It is most useful to dissociate your disagreement with an established NIH process from your own particular treatment within the process.

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