May 2005

Want to apply for a grant at Grants.gov? See the latest edition of the Succeed Newsletters article titled "Why Apply for Grants at Grants.gov?" with instructions and tips for potential applicants - including a step-by step guide to Get Started and the common mistakes to watch out for when applying.  You can have a look at the newsletter by going to www.grants.gov/assets/GrantsSpringNewsletter2005.pdf.

European scientists should have a look at the news article, "A Framework for Change?" in Science, Vol. 308, (15 April 2005), pp. 342 – 4. Included is a sidebar on getting science grants in the EU context; For comparable advice about matching agency priorities to one’s own research interests, see Chapter 2, "Identifying Funding Sources," in Getting Science Grants.

April 2005

Scientists who have looked to the National Institutes of Health for research funding should be aware that funding rates for external grants at NIH are in a nosedive, from over 30% in 2001 to the low twenties in 2005. Unless the 2006 budget reverses a decreased rate of growth for NIH-funded research, a surge in proposals (from 28,000 in 2001 to >40,000 in 2004, and a projected 45,000 in 2006) will continue to erode funding rates. It has been my experience, and that of most program officers, that funding rates at or below 20% make it almost impossible to make rational, defensible funding decisions for proposals near the cutoff point. (For a discussion of this point, see "Scoring, Proposal Quality, and Funding Rates," in Chapter 1 of Getting Science Grants.) If you do apply for support to NIH, please read and internalize the NIH funding criteria listed on p. 50 of Getting Science Grants.

December 2004

A policy article in the October 8 issue of Science describes the tension between creativity (proposing ground-breaking, truly innovative ideas) and safety (proposing safe, close-to-the-paradigm work) in proposals to funding agencies. This is a question I get frequently at proposal-writing workshops, sometimes in the form, "Don't agencies only fund ideas that you already know will work, because you've done them before you apply?" Particularly when the agency is an arm of the government, there is always a tendency to trust only the most routine, unexceptionable research. However, compiling a track record of successful, unimaginative research can amount to selling your scientific soul for a mess of intellectual pottage (or even for tenure!). If you find your boldest ideas shot down by agency reviewers, don't retreat to the bland for the sake of safety. Remember Carl Sagan's comment about flying saucers: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary levels of proof." Don't dumb down your creativity to fit the level of proof (preliminary results, closely reasoned interpretation) you can easily provide. Instead, write your narrative so clearly and tightly, and provide preliminary results that are so clean and significant that no fair-minded reviewer could say anything but (to quote a review I solicited for a rising young scientist) "This is one of those rare proposals that just jumps out and says 'Fund me.'"

November 2004

The US House of Representatives has again intervened in NIH grantmaking and in budget approvals involving PI travel (See Science 17 Sept. 2004, p. 1688). This again underlines the importance of writing an Abstract or Project Summary that makes clear to a possibly hostile lay reader the societal and scientific importance of research in controversial areas, primarily in the social and behavioral sciences. (See Tip of the Month for November 2003). It is unclear whether this latest incident, in which the House voted to kill behavioral psychology proposals funded by NIH, amounts to a further trend toward political control of scientific research or is just a case of election-year grandstanding. In either case, PI's in potentially controversial areas of research will do well to treat the Government of the United States as a generous but possibly unreliable partner in supporting science. Explain your research clearly and calmly, and make its social and intellectual impacts clear.

July 2004

Project summaries for NSF proposals must include separate paragraphs addressing the intellectual merit of the proposed project, and its broader implications. These mandatory topics cannot be included in a single paragraph, or omitted. Proposals that do not conform to this requirement will be returned to the PI without review.

This and other proposal requirements are described in detail in the new NSF Grant Proposal Guide, http://www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?gpg.

May 2004

Sometimes we think of NSF as a slow-footed monster with a ton of money and a very long lead time between proposal submission and funding decision. And that can be the case, in the major grant programs of NSF or any agency. But don't overlook the relatively nimble Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER, pronounced "Sugar.") programs. These are intended for innovative, relatively low-budget ideas. They are not sent outside NSF for peer review, but reviewed by Program Officers in the Directorate most relevant to your research idea; this results in a relatively rapid response. You can get details in the appropriate section of the NSF Grant Proposal Guide (www.nsf.gov/pubs/2004/nsf042/start.htm) , Section II, D, 1.

April 2004

Bruce T. Milne of the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico has come up with Ten Commandments (and some other sound advice) about writing grant proposals that are definitely worth a look. You can find them at http://sevilleta.unm.edu/~bmilne/tencommands.htm.

March 2004

Do spelling and grammar really matter? After all, you're writing a scientific proposal that will be read by technically sophisticated people, not an essay for the ages. But yes, in fact they do, for two good reasons:

(1) The purpose of standard spelling and of grammar rules is to make meaning clear. They are in that way like any other infrastructural tool: pure solvents, genetically homogeneous mice, or a well-calibrated instrument. Clean prose is more likely to do the job for you.

(2) Carelessness in language invites the suspicion that the writer might be careless in other ways. Would you trust a careless scientist to run a clean lab, be scrupulous in safety and subject-protection matters, and keep an accurate research notebook?

February 2004

If you are applying for support to the National Science Foundation, please be aware that there is not much uniformity in review procedures among the various directorates and programs of that agency. The four stages of review described in Chapter 1 of Getting Science Grants are all there, but they are apportioned among external reviewers, internal panels, ad hoc panels and Program Officers in a wide variety of ways, depending partly on the aims of the particular grant program. Because you are writing your proposal to all these audiences, you can do a better job if you understand exactly how reviewing, ranking, and funding recommendations will be done for the specific program under which you are applying. Call the responsible Program Officer (you can find names under each program announcement; begin at www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/publicat/nsf04009/toc.htm ), and try to get your answers from a career administrator, rather than from a (possibly new-to-the-job) rotator.

January 2004

If you want to involve undergraduate students in your research projects, the Council on Undergraduate Research (www.cur.org) is an invaluable asset. Membership is inexpensive, and brings you into contact with thousands of scientists with interests and problems similar to yours.

December 2003

The American Chemical Society's Department of Career Services maintains a library of very useful publications aimed at the early-career academic or industrial scientist. Typical titles include, "How to Write a Teaching Philosophy for Academic Employment," "Conducting an Electronic Job Search," "Tips on Writing a Curriculum Vitae" and "Employment Guide for Foreign Born Chemists." Although these publications are written for chemists, in fact they contain much thoughtful and valuable guidance for young scientists in a wide variety of fields. They are available without charge on the Web at http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/career.html?DOC=careers\pub02.html.

November 2003

Chapter 1 of Getting Science Grants mentions in passing that political considerations may decrease or reverse a funding recommendation in rare cases. Recent news (see e.g. Science, October 31, 2003) carries an account of Congressional inquiries into some groups of NIH grants. PI's applying for public funding of research on potentially controversial areas of human health and behavior should not be "chilled" or intimidated by such inquiries, but should be sure that their proposal   and especially the abstract   describes clearly how the proposed research meets public health interests.

October 2003

Not every science funding agency is a good bet for every kind of science. If the fund's Advisory Board, Study Section, Panel, etc. (information that is often obtainable from the funder—see pp. 4-5 of Getting Science Grants) does not include people active in your field or areas close to it, they are unlikely to feel confident in supporting your work. It is only human to have more sympathy for proposals whose premises we understand.