You’ve just gotten the rejection back, and it stings. Your reviewers wrote about all sorts of technical issues with your proposal. You scrambled to fix those issues – only to receive another rejection with a different set of “issues”. Are your reviewers insane?
Okay, I must admit the title is a bit melodramatic. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this thing that is, shall we say, concerning. It all starts back in 2009, when I received some ARRA money for a couple of projects I had going in my lab. That was great, because it has allowed…
Yesterday I was to meet a friend at the coffee shop. She showed up almost an hour late and in tears. I had received an email from her saying she would be 15 minutes late. It turns out that because she was running a bit late to begin with, she was in a rush. In…
Faculty meetings can be a fun crucible in which to observe people’s attitudes about almost anything. Today, let’s look at the attitude that some people have about grant writing (and how that attitude may thwart them from accomplishing what they want). Some time ago at a faculty meeting, the subject of having students do an exercise…
Is your life like a stuck emergency brake in your car, slowing you down and generating useless heat in the process? Many of our lives are like that, because we lack awareness of something going on in our minds: friction. Friction is caused by a battle between what we want and what we expect. Unfortunately,…
The NSF just announced a new initiative to help women tackle obstacles in their science careers. It’s focused on providing PhD students with inspiration and motivation, based on success stories of other women that have done it. Good stuff, right? But that’s only my own interpretation. I’m not actually sure if this is what the…
Who is your grant reviewer, and what the heck do they really want from you?
When we come down with flu, we do everything we can to get rid of the virus and get better. But when we come down with mind viruses—or ideas that harm us rather than help us—we often just accept them as “how things are,” doing nothing to counter their damaging effects. There’s one mind virus,…
Getting a grant funded will be one of the most challenging things you face in your science career.
This is particularly acute when you’re trying for your first grant, but the challenge persists throughout your science career. It doesn’t magically go away once you become “famous.” I know of very senior, very reputable scientists who still struggle to get grants funded.
Stem cells, etc. The wires are abuzz about the potential fall-out from last week’s ruling by a federal district judge to deny federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. At Science, read about potential repercussions (i.e. lab layoffs); worries that the ban could extend to all hESC research, not just new grants; and…
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