The Science Grant

This book was one year in the making. It distills my knowledge of what writing for others means. And the grant applicant definitely writes for others – the grantors, the people who have the power to shape or reshape the applicant’s future – YOUR future.

You can get it now at leanpub.com (pdf version), or on Apple books (if you have a Mac – that version has interactive exercises), and on Amazon (for Kindle or in book form).

While writing this book, I made four fundamental discoveries.

1. It is so easy for a writer to forget about how little the reader really knows. The knowledge gap between them is often found in “cause-to-result” statements like between “because, since, as,…” and  “therefore, hence, as a result”.  Things are just so evident to us that we sometimes wrongly believe they are also evident to others. (Chapter on Reader Expectations).
2. Grammar is not neutral in the way a writer influences the reader. Of course, we know that parts of speech do. Adjectives and adverbs paint efficiently in bright vivid colors. But surely, clauses and subclauses, the structural elements in sentences, play no other role than carrying their word cargo, right? Wrong! Grammar, used appropriately is a powerful persuader.(Chapter on Persuading using grammar)
3. A scientist, particularly one expected to evaluate other’s ideas, cannot be bullied with enthusiasm and promises of slam dunks. How then is one to convey simply, honestly, and respectfully one’s ideas to such strict and demanding assessors of an idea’s worth and an investigator’s caliber? Hedge words are the most powerful weapon in a writer’s arsenal (Chapter 6 on reader expectations).
4. The brain uses neurotransmitters to control memory and attention. Indeed, some of these neurotransmitters are common to memory and attention, which act as twin cousins in both synergistic and antagonistic ways. Controlling attention is also controlling how much the reader remembers. Alas, driven by the aim of trying to impress and get attention by volume more than by quality, a writer often overwhelms both attention and memory, and an overwhelmed reader is an underwhelmed evaluator. (Chapter 1, 3 and 4 on the physiology of memory and attention and the techniques to sustain these core reader resources).

I hope you will also benefit from my research in writing.

PIs frequently face the problem to decide whether to resubmit or to write a new application. Imagine a game of dice with the following rules: roll a regular dice, you win if you get a six; however, you never get to see the face of the dice when it stops rolling, someone else does. If the dice turned a four or a five, you are asked to toss the dice again. If you turned a four in the first toss, you always lose whatever the second roll of dice turns up. However, if you turned a five in the first toss, someone will toss a coin privately. If it lands on Head, you win regardless of the result of your second dice roll, if it lands on Tail, only rolling a six is a win. Would you roll the dice again, or would you pass on the opportunity and start afresh?

If you knew you had a five, you would resubmit because your chances of winning are much higher. This is often the case if you resubmit early and the review panel has not changed. But sometimes panel members change and the new members mostly view your resubmission as a new application (a new roll of the dice). And if you knew you had a four, no amount of rewriting effort would have helped and you would have submitted a new application.

So, how does one determine whether a four or a five turned up in the first roll of dice?

Reviewer feedback could guide you, but the most critical document to help you determine your chances is the summary in which the session chair captures your grant’s most important problems. So before you start addressing the comments of each reviewer in your resubmission, consider that summary first. Where is the real problem?  You may have to read between the lines to find out.

Are you the problem?  Investigator is one of the big five evaluation criteria (Innovation, Significance, Approach, INVESTIGATOR, Environment). Do you feel that most comments in all five criteria always point back to you, directly or indirectly: lack of confidence in your ability to manage a complex operation involving many participants and a large budget, lack of confidence in research expertise with no senior PI as collaborator or mentor, lack of confidence in your choice of collaborators (they are your friends – present more by courtesy than by necessity, or they are there by necessity but you have never worked with them in earlier projects or written papers together – so they present a risk). In that case, it may be better to rewrite your application with a better team.

Is significance the problem? To gain significance, you add specific aims which make your project complex given the high variety in methods used or the variety and cost of  equipment involved. To gain significance, you rely on too many assumptions; for example: if this is available, and that comes to fruition, and if the other thing happens – the research would have large implications. To gain significance you rely on the most iffy specific aim, the one with no preliminary data or work.  Significance is intimately linked to innovation. With little innovation, the significance is low because the next steps, i.e. the opportunities for further research your grant will open, are too limited. It may be better to rewrite a new application with more realistic and better supported aims, or with a greater focus on what happens next.

Is vagueness the problem? The comment “lack of detail” often hides a larger problem which could be remedied,  not by more unneeded details, but by details which are more relevant to assess your expertise and project planning skill. “Lack of detail” may indeed reveal that your plan is not worked through. But it may also be that you assumed the reviewers knew much more than they actually did, which made you leave out the justification for the approach or methods. Pity, for it would have shown you understand their strengths and limitations in a technique-rich landscape. You have not deemed necessary to add expert details or references that show you know and care about the known pitfalls of methods, statistics, and data collection. The “I’m-aware-of-that” detail is exactly what the reviewer needs to assess your competency. Finally, vagueness of the research question will inevitably lead to “lack of detail” comments, so clarify and resubmit.

Is lukewarm support from the panel the problem? Again, Do not be fooled by the mildly supportive ho, hum comments intended more to prevent your neurotic breakdown than to compliment you. Your research question may simply not be exciting enough, or is too insignificant. It needs to be looked at again. Write a new application when you have a better idea with greater significance.

The recommendations above are based on episode 63 of “the effort report” podcast by two eminent PIs with extensive panel and submission experience: Elizabeth Matsui and Roger Peng

Grant writers look for the financial health of the grantee because poor financial health  means trouble. Does your organization rely solely on grants for their funding, or do they have other means of financing research, such as licensing of patents, national program financing, partnership with industries… In  other words, grant writers want to avoid situations where the grant applicant is desperate to get cash to survive, because desperation often results in hurriedness, and hurriedness rarely bears fruit. In a world where all applications are graded with an A+ or an F, only the well-prepared get funded.

Grant writers also look for answers. They should not be the ones to fill the blanks. Sounds familiar? The senior PI, without a solid plan and research objective, may ask junior researchers to conceive one. The design of the plan is then left up to the less-paid unguided research associates under the excuse that preparing a grant provides hands-on experience in grant applications. I have seen that before, and I have looked into the eyes of unprepared junior researchers unable to answer the simplest questions about the grant they prepare without referring to the PI for answers. They get thrown in at the deep-end trying to accomplish the impossible when, in fact, a pilot study, or exploratory research is first needed before moving on to the larger grant they are asked to prepare. And as they reveal their problems to their PI, the PI alters the grant objectives based on his or her new understanding of the problem. The ground keeps shifting. Maybe this is a valid way to conduct research; But it is not a valid way to prepare for a grant. The senior PIs should indeed involve junior researchers in grant preparation, but the research design, the hypotheses, and the research objectives are squarely in the PI’s camp. Sheep do not guide the shepherd.

Crowdfunding is here to stay. I have already spent hundreds of dollars funding different products on indiegogo. These products directly address personal or family needs that the market does not currently address. Crowdfunding is a wonderful way to encourage start-ups 1) by showing that their product ideas are meeting real needs, 2) by funding the development of the first prototype or embodiment of a product idea,  and 3) by enabling the collection of early feedback from pioneering users.

However, these regular crowdfunding sites do not cater for science projects and products which are below level 5 on the technology readiness Level (TRL).  That nine level scale, created by NASA in the 70’s and then extended to domains outside space exploration, helps with funding decisions. Many funding organizations ask the applicant to peg their project to a readiness level. So it is useful to assess the readiness of your own project BEFORE you target specific science crowdfunding sites. The closer to market the product/project is, the more fundable it becomes, and the less risky it is overall.

The book promoted by this website, mentions several crowdfunding sites: Experiment.com, and walacea.com (now crowd.science).

The funder of Walacea (Natalie Jonk – UK) named her site after the pioneer in crowd funding for science, Sir Alfred Russel Wallace, who funded his independent research on natural selection by selling beetles and other specimens he collected in the East Indies. In a way, Sir Wallace networked extensively, gave talks, and solicited money, but had something to offer in exchange: new knowledge and exotic specimens from abroad.

Similarly, a project fully funded by crowd.science on pesticides and bees offers financial backers the type of scientific fares one would expect from academics: invitation to a lecture on the topic, copies of a book written by the project leader, or a guided walk. But private individual funding is not enough. Roughly a third of the funding for the pesticide and bees project came from wealthy sponsors whose purpose is aligned with the project (friends of the earth, beekeeper associations). So, if you want to fund independent research, make sure you have something to sell – or more politically-stated, “offer” to your funders: tangible things, knowledge, or shared vision. The higher the TRL level, the more palatable your offerings will be.

Roald Hoffman, Winner of the 1981 nobel prize in Chemistry, wrote a enlightening book: THE SAME and NOT THE SAME. Both sides of the photo show the Khmer temple. The same temple?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Roald Hoffman is a renaissance man with an encyclopedic culture and many talents outside of chemistry. But this blog is about the differences between a grant application and a scientific paper. The link with chemistry will become apparent later.

In my earlier “Ins and Outs of Grant Writing” classes, I asked the participants to list out what the differences are. Having no experience in grant writing, they listed out the obvious differences, for example: a paper is about completed research, a grant is about future research; a paper is to get recognition and citations, a grant is to get money; The structure and contents of a paper (mostly the IMRAD structure) are quite different from the structure and contents of a grant which also includes a budget, a schedule, a detailed list of past achievements and grants received.

By the time the class was finished, the list became more comprehensive… but note the ellipsis!

Differences between writing a grant or an article 

Grants: pre-significance

– It presents a plan

– It has more justification on the approach / methodology you want to adopt

– It presents alternatives (plan B) to mitigate risk

– It is read and accepted by more lay people, or people with less expertise in your research topic

– It has to show return on investment

– It needs to convince the readers that you are the right person to do this research (why me) and that you will use the money properly in the timeframe of the grant.

     => need to convince the project is feasible.

– It has a large admin overhead

– The visuals to represent flow / process / ideas play a very important role

– resubmission is limited

– Selection is collective (panel)

…

Articles: post-significance

– It presents a report

– It gives greater details

– It is read and accepted by experts in the field

– The why me aspect is less important

– It needs to convince the readers that the conclusions are correct

     => need to convince on conclusions

– Its visuals are more of the type that feature results: tables / graphs

– Resubmission is easy

– Selection is individual (editor)

…

One aspect was missing from that list, one that participants expected to be the same for both grant application and manuscript: the writing style. “The same and not the same” applies here. Roald Hoffman’s book is amazing. His writing style is clear. His sentences are precise, yet with a simpler structure and reduced number of clauses. He bonds with his reader, not chemically, but intellectually, by being clear and accessible, by making sure the jargon is properly explained and illustrated if need be. In his review of the book, Carl Djerassi, published scientist and author but better known as “the father of the pill”, writes “[Hoffman] is the ultimate literary alchemist […] he transforms base facts into golden understanding.” Your writing style should move from the scientific writing style towards the science writing style. Read popular scientific magazines like “the Scientist”, “the American Scientist”, “Scientific American”, or “New Scientist”. Personally, I read articles in “The Scientist”, and “SciTech daily” – daily online magazines covering both life and engineering sciences.

“The same” precision and rigor of science, “Not the same” writing style. 

Note: A list of these differences is proposed in an article written by Dr. Robert Porter, in a 2006 article entitled “Why Academics Have a Hard Time Writing Good Grant Proposals”. I do not quite agree with all of his differences – for example, I disagree that a paper is an individual exercise whereas a grant is a collective one. Nowadays, in 2017, more and more papers are a collective effort, especially in fields like Physics. I had forgotten all about Porter’s 2006 paper when I came across episode 57 (October 2017) of the chatty podcast of Dr. Roger Peng and Dr. Elizabeth Matsui – the effort report that mentioned it. They broach the topic of “not all scientific writing is the same” (move straight to minute 53 of the podcast!). When Elizabeth Matsui became interested in the topic in her capacity as a mentor of young PIs having to write their first grant, she realized that her new PIs came to a grant application with expectations that it would be similar to a scientific paper. After all, that is what they were familiar with. So highlighting the differences was essential.

In the IEEE Founders Award Lecture published in The Bridge, 1992, (National Academies press) on Some reflections on innovation and invention, luminary George Heilmeier put in eight simple questions what anyone proposing a project should be able to answer.

1. “What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
2. How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
3. What’s new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
4. Who cares? If you’re successful, what difference will it make?
5. What are the risks and the payoffs?
6. How much will it cost?
7. How long will it take?
8. What are the midterm and final “exams” to check for success?”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Heilmeier

A proposal should be as jargon free as possible, and certainly its objective should be clear to all, experts and non experts. If you absolutely have to use jargon in the title, it must be defined in the abstract. Definitions cannot wait till the reviewer gets inside your grant. Why? Title and abstracts create the first impression. If the proposal presents the objective in a way that the reviewer feels his or her nascent interests are aligned with the proposal, a conformation bias is likely to appear – which of course, plays in your favor. It is difficult to feel good about something you do not understand!

The gap is what answers the second question. Remember that to innovate you extend, or modify what already exists (“done today”, “current practice”). Blue sky research grants exploring the pitch-dark side of research are not for everyone. You need an outstanding track record for those. The grey side is more accessible.

Novelty is expected, often in methods and approach, but with novelty comes risks, and risks are expressed in levels of confidence. That confidence is built over years of experience and a deep understanding of what your abilities are, but not only. The “You” is now plural. “You” are a team.

That you care about your project is a given, but do others care as much as you do? Who are these people? And if they do not know they should care, will you be able to show why they should, in a compelling way? Before you ask other people to get into your shoes, find out whose feet are blistered, feeling pinched, or in daily need of a shoe horn. For that, investigate, not the limitations that are there, but the consequence of these limitations.

Risk is a word rich in meaning. It spells potential trouble, but it also promises great rewards, not just payback, but payoffs – returns on the grant investment. Although it is not becoming to talk hard dollars when one is concerned with genes and quarks, it nevertheless will ultimately translate into hard currency for someone down the line. The economics of research matter to the grantor. If that payoff in dollars is further down that you would like, at least reveal the path that will get there. Build a dissemination plan to ensure long term impact.

Finally, just like students have midterm and final exams, build a solid evaluation plan to make sure you know if you are on track (or not) and meeting your specific aims, on time,  but also quantitatively and qualitatively. Good evaluation criteria are hard to come by. Learn from other PIs how they do their formative and summative evaluation plans. And remember that success is not what you say it is, but what others agree it is. So make sure you give them your success evaluation criteria before they create alternative ones you will disagree with. Deciding on these criteria is a team exercise. Involve your grant team. In the process of trying to establish these success criteria, you may discover that some of your specific aims are vague, not measurable, and require rewriting.

Should you ever doubt that risk is an important factor in grant evaluation, read on. I just looked at the reviewer comments for a European grant which missed funding despite an overall score of 87/100.  Let me just quote the reviewer comments under evaluation criterion 3 – Quality and Efficiency of the implementation:

“Potential risks in research activities are insufficiently substantiated. The mitigation strategies are only superficially addressed and insufficiently justified.”

To paraphrase, ” you have identified potential risks, but have not described them in detail – thereby indicating you need more awareness on how these virtual risks will take shape during your grant. Consequently, the strategies to lessen or handle these risks are superficial and whether they are the right ones to mitigate these risks is unclear.”

Note that the applicants are not accused of ignoring the risks. They are criticized for not demonstrating they have a clear idea of what these risks are and how to deal with them should the improbable occur.

So let’s learn about risks and the strategies to address them.

The norm ISO 31000:2009 defines risk as the effect of uncertainty on [accomplishing your] objectives. In the case of a grant, uncertainty affects pretty much everything: your budget, your plan A, your choice of a suitable approach and collaborators, etc.  Uncertainty’s effect is to make your project deviate from what you expect will be the normal course of events. Uncertainty introduces deviations around the normal (not a new concept, really) – some which can be compensated for, others which have far reaching and long lasting consequences. Where do these deviations originate from?  Unexpected events top the list. Either you did not know such events could happen,  or you presumed they would not happen, yet they did, and vice versa, or you minimized their likelihood,  or you misjudged their consequences and outcomes.

\CC BY-SA 3.0 Nick Youngson

You, the PI, are the risk owner and manager. Since you are accountable for taking risk, you need to justify the risk you take, within the grant application. But first, you have to identify the sources of risk, evaluate the degree of risk, and establish your risk profile. With your risk profile in place, you are ready to draw a risk-management strategy.

ISO 31000 identifies seven ways to manage risk: one to increase it, one to maintain it, and five to mitigate or cancel it.

• Increase the risk exposure when greater risk would have an even greater overall payoff.
• Monitor the risk closely without removing it for it has both beneficial and negative aspects.
• Decrease the odds of the negative risk by reducing uncertainty.
• Dilute the unwanted risk by sharing it.
• Change the outcome of events that affect the objectives because they increase task cost, introduce delays in task schedule, lower safety, or worse impact on the environment.
• Remove the risk trigger (circumstance, situation, process, environment, practice)
• Cancel the activity associated with the unwanted risk or replace that activity with one of lower or no risk.

Read again the book chapter on risks and determine which of these seven ways to treat the many risks summarized page 176 would be the most effective in your context. Context does matter because it favors the occurrence of events. Context is both external and internal. Each PI will be influenced differently by it.  The external context includes the scientific trends and how they affect the PI’s employer , the political, financial, economic context at a local and global level, as well as the quality of the relationship between the grantor and the PI’s organization. The internal context includes the organization of the PI, its objectives and policies, the support environment (equipment, facilities, IT, grant officers, availability of postdocs, collaborators…), as well as how well networked the PI is within and outside of the host organization.

Risk matters. Clarity in what risk is will make you a more effective troubleshooter when the probable becomes certainty. And It will make funding you… less risky!

Every PI has that question in mind as they write their proposal: How much risk should I take in my grant? Too much, I will be rejected, and too little, I’ll be rejected also.

A few years back Dr Rafal Zielinski from MD Anderson (Texas University) and I were invited by the Polish Foundation for Science to give a seminar on Grants in the beautiful city of Gdansk. Gdansk University Dean of Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology, a uniquely gifted, both bold and bald professor, Dr Igor Konieczny, also gave a talk “Grant Writing in Poland, Perspective and Advice”. During the Q&A came the question of how the grant review panel regards risk. In his answer, Dr Konieczny used a very apt metaphor worth sharing: that of serving in tennis.

“The ideal situation is not to propose plans that are too risky. In tennis, with your first serve, you would target the corner of the court, but if you fail, with your second serve, you are simply going to pass the ball over the net. Design the grant application so that one thing is safe to achieve.”

Flickr: Carine06  – Roger Federer CC-BY SA 2.0

Young investigators often consider older PIs with envy, and also cynicism. They think that, by the time the PI submits a proposal, the preliminary work is so extensive and has removed so much risk and given the PI so much experience in the domain that feasibility is guaranteed; The ball will pass over the net. Naturally, much of that preliminary work was paid for by an earlier grant – which strengthens feasibility. Young investigators feel that their first serve should impress, send the ball in the corner of the court. Indeed, some of their later serves could, but the first serve should not. Simply hitting the grantor-sent ball (i.e serving their needs) and avoiding sending the ball into the reviewer’s net would already be a great achievement. The reviewer’s net catches the ball when the grant idea lacks strength: low significance or overused approach unlikely do deliver interesting results. Start there. Never mind the jump smash a la Roger Federer, the attacking volley a la Martina Navratilova. The donor referee will not be impressed if the ball hits the net.

Focus on getting the ball over the net first. This means your first specific aim should contain little risk, yet be seen as valuable on its own. 

You, the PI, have been granted your wish. Your proposal has been accepted and funding of a new lab is on the way. You are now extending your feelers to find the appropriate people to staff your lab. Time passes, you are interviewing, but only what you consider average scientific talent turns up for the interview. Of course, you can’t wait, AND you want the best. But why would the best take a chance on you, the young and barely known PI? You have a notoriety problem. Since the grant clock is ticking, and you can’t afford to waste time two two now consider possibilities: Do it all yourself at an great cost to you and your family, or  take a chance on untested staff and hire away – you have the money.

The situation is not hypothetical. As I sat in one of the Starbucks hangouts in Singapore, I witnessed the conversation between two PIs, a young one and a veteran. I had arranged the meeting between them. Here is in point form the wisdom that was shared during the meeting by the veteran PI, Dr Judy Sng, senior lecturer at the department of Pharmacology of the NUS School of Medicine:

• Do not hire without first assessing the skills and attitude. These cannot be assessed during an interview. “I usually do a written test assessment, for example a simple molar calculation, PCR reactions,… I also invite the potential new hire to meet other people in the lab first and get the feedback from them after the candidate leaves. During the visit, I invite the potential candidate for a meal with the rest of the lab. That’s where you can see how candidates behave and interact with fellow members. You can tell if they speak condescendingly to their peers during a simple meal.”
• Technicians first, Postdoc later, and Students last. “Yes, if you hire technicians to start your lab, the scientific development is slower than if you start hiring postdocs. But not all postdocs like setting up a new lab. Time is precious to them. They join the lab later, perhaps 1-2 years after lab setup. The consequence of starting with technicians is that you have to train the technicians while doing workbench yourself. Older technicians tend to stay with you longer than young ones. Their stability brings much relief when you start up a lab.”
• Students are both an asset and a liability. “They may be the very ones who will join your lab in the future. Bringing them in give you a chance to evaluate them, and see if they will stay for the long haul. On the other hand, students will drain you, your resources, and your staff, particularly those who have thesis to write and need data. Those who just intern do not need to have data. Training any student will cost you, so choose only interns with a potential to become staff.”

Dr Sng also shared other points not directly related to new hires, but they reflect her experience and are certainly worth sharing in this blog. They are about other PIs, family, and teaching duties.

• Once a PI with a lab, everyone other PI wants you as a collaborator in their grant. “Be selfish and work on your project first. You have to be VERY selective and learn to say ‘No, thank you’. But it is an excellent way to build relationships with your peers.”
• Keep sane, value your family. “You have a child, I have mine too. Papers and grants matter, but kids are growing up fast. Although the days with little children seem never to end, the years actually fly by. It is important to balance your time well and spend time with family.”
• Teaching takes more time off your already crammed schedule. “Envisage teaching at a much later stage, not right away when you create your lab. I only felt comfortable to start technology transfer through teaching in the fifth year of my career. Creating lecture material is hard and takes time.”