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If you check your junk or spam folder right now, you’ll probably see tens or even hundreds of messages promoting erection pills of various kinds.

Before we had such sophisticated spam filters, they would clog your inbox, and you probably reviled them.  Damn spammers!  Why do I have to wade through so many junk messages about V*agra pills in order to get to a relevant message?

If this was your response, let’s analyze why.  There are a couple of basic reasons:

1. You have no need for an erection pill.  This is kind of an easy one, since half the population don’t really need them, and of the other half, I’m guessing only a small fraction feel the need for them at any given time. It reminds me of all the emails I’ve been getting lately from various “young lovely Russian women” telling me they’re looking for a handsome young man, ready to fulfill his every desire.  As a middle-aged woman, I’ve been tempted to write back just to see how they respond.
2. Even if you are presently in need of erection pills, you probably wouldn’t consider a spammer to be a reliable source.  You’re morelikely head to your doctor or another trustworthy source.

Spam holds an important lesson for your grant applications, especially if you’re operating in what I term “grant spamming” mode.

I define grant spamming as sending out as many grant applications as humanly possible, in response to any and every opportunity that comes along, regardless of whether your work is a good fit for that opportunity.  I know this mode well, because there was a short period in my life where I practiced it.

“Grant spam” is not all that different from erection pill emails.

When someone is spamming grants, there is little attention to the simple question of what their audience really wants. Yes, I know, we all have the next great miracle discovery – but if the funder and its reviewers are not interested in that type of discovery, it matters not how great the thing is.  Just like the erection pill spam: if you’re not in need of erection pills, then no matter how great the pills are or how cheaply sold, you’re not going to buy.

When someone is spamming grants, the question of credibility will arise.  “Even if we were looking for this solution, would we buy it from this person?”  It takes years to build credibility in a particular field and specialty. But when grant spamming, it’s well-nigh impossible to build credibility in all the relevant specialties.

Perhaps more importantly, and again much like erection pills emails, grant spam clogs up the system, forcing reviewers and funders to spend enormous time and money dealing with it.  That’s because, unlike recipients of email spam, funders like NIH treat every application as equally and fairly as possible.  That means that they provide a basic review for all proposals, even from applicants who submit dozens of applications.

The NIH behaves in the name of transparency, and I’m glad they do. But the downside of this is susceptibility to grant spam.  Since every application is considered by reviewers, each and every spam application consumes their time and energy, regardless of merit.

NIH data shows that the number of grant applications has risen by about 64% (for R01-style applications) over the past ten years.  And as funding gets tighter, the most common knee-jerk response is to send even more applications, much like buying more lottery tickets to improve the odds.  As people submit more applications, the odds get tighter, and so people respond by submitting even more applications. Mathematically, this is an unstable function that ends up at infinity: an infinite number of applications to write and review.  In the words of Everett from O Brother, Where Art Thou, “We’re in a tight spot.”

The only way out is to focus on quality over quantity (or, to make the system less transparent, which would be a troubling outcome).

So, I hope you’ll reconsider your ways if you’re a grant spammer.  Before submitting any application, you might ask yourself:

1. Is this project something that this funder will be authentically interested in?
2. Have I submitted a nearly identical proposal somewhere else? If so, why am I submitting it again without significant tailoring to the interests of the funder?
3. Am I submitting so many proposals that I no longer have time to write papers or do science anymore?
4. Have I or my collaborators built up sufficient expertise in this area to merit consideration?
5. Do I have the time and energy to make this a very high quality proposal, so that I’m not wasting my time and my reviewers’ time?

If the answer to one or more of these questions is “no,” it warrants serious consideration as to whether you should really be writing the proposal in the first place.

Anyway, if you want a series of free videos that shows you one way to start building up your “brand reputation” so that when you do apply for grants in your area that you have the most credibility possible, then check out https://scienceoptimizer.com.