In a letter that I received this week from the Wellcome Trust about my grant application I read: “The Committee commended your engaging lay summary, which was deemed to be one of the most entertaining ever presented.” That was very good of them to say so. But it was not good enough.
That’s because the statement was preceded by the news that “whilst the Committee agreed your application had merit, the competition was strong, and as a result, we are unable to support it.” In other words, “this is not good enough.”
The comments from the referees, which were attached to the letter, universally praised the value, content and design of the proposed program of investigation. There were some niggles about particular priorities, but these were offered constructively. One referee made a better argument for the project than I had made myself in the application. But this was not good enough.
We have worked hard on this project over the past several years, generated new protein structures, new results, new insights. And published papers. By many measures our investigations have been very successful. But this is not good enough.
I have written elsewhere about the thrill of science, trying to explain why I love being a scientist. There is great joy in discovery, in living by your wits. I have fantastic memories of the good days, some very recent. I know there will be more. But today, this is not good enough.
I knew when I set out on this journey that I was casting loose on uncertain seas. I rejected safe passage through a career in the National Health Service. I knew that as a scientist I would always have to operate at the very limit of my abilities. Anything less would not be a life. But today, this does not feel good enough.
There is nothing special or unusual in what has happened. This eviscerating experience of rejection is by no means unique. It is shared by all scientists. It is the life we choose. But today, the comfort derived from knowing this is somehow not quite good enough.
However, tomorrow is another day.
Hugs…
=(
I’m sorry…
But thanks for blogging this, because SO MANY people have NO CLUE how science gets funded – or not. This post, with the summary and your excited blog posts and videos are so informative in that regard. To see where funding comes from, and how much it takes to get it, and how difficult it is to get – even for the most passionate scientist/storyteller. Whatever positive image of science is out there usually revolves around scientists just investigating whatever they want on a whim, and you just showed that it doesn’t work that way. A few weeks ago I was talking to a film maker at a party who had no clue that science is a competitive business. He thought the concept of scooping was unique to journalism and things like screenplays. When I explained he understood, but it had just never crossed his mind that researchers compete for funding.
Ha! I started out with the sad face like this =( and then my comment didn’t show! So let’s try it again without that being the start of a line…
I’m sorry…
But thanks for blogging this, because SO MANY people have NO CLUE how science gets funded – or not. This post, with the summary and your excited blog posts and videos are so informative in that regard. To see where funding comes from, and how much it takes to get it, and how difficult it is to get – even for the most passionate scientist/storyteller. Whatever positive image of science is out there usually revolves around scientists just investigating whatever they want on a whim, and you just showed that it doesn’t work that way. A few weeks ago I was talking to a film maker at a party who had no clue that science is a competitive business. He thought the concept of scooping was unique to journalism and things like screenplays. When I explained he understood, but it had just never crossed his mind that researchers compete for funding.
Back luck, Stephen. But I have faith you’ll bounce back and show them. Hah. Go for it.
Bummer, Stephen. Commiserations. However, your proposal could also be good enough. I recently had a proposal rejected by a UK funding body that was accepted (top ranked!) even more recently, elsewhere (enigmatic, eh?). The proposal was good enough, in the right place at the right time.
I’m glad you got constructive advice from your reviewers – it’ll make resubmission go even more smoothly, at the right place, right time!
Thanks for your comments folks. I’ve no doubt I’ll get over it (time to go and watch Touching the Void again!). But I had promised myself at the start to try to be as candid as possible and felt that, as well as posting about the good times, I had to deal with the days when things don’t go my way. The truth may not have been wholly unvarnished, but I did sand it down quite vigorously.
I particularly appreciate your remarks Eva – hope it might do some good…
A few weeks ago I was talking to a film maker at a party who had no clue that science is a competitive business
I’m glad you brought that up, Eva; I’ve encountered that same lack of knowledge, corrected the individual (gently), and then never thought to do or write anything about this (apparently) widespread misconception. Some people also think that research manuscripts are automatically accepted for publication, without review, and that this is why there are so many scientific journals.
Stephen, [hugs] and I feel your pain. It’s also, as I’m sure you know, painful to be on the reviewers’ side, especially during the current economic downturn, when some wonderful proposals from productive researchers have to be rejected for funding. I also really appreciate your honesty; many science bloggers trumpet about how they’ll write about the ups and downs, but few actually write about the downs.
What a bummer Stephen, I am sorry to hear this. Don’t let it get you down! At a certain level, it’s just not the quality of the individual proposal – it really comes down to being at the right place at the right time, and it sounds like that’s what happened here.
Real shame, Stephen. The philistines.
Sorry to hear. I do like your idea over at LabLit of using a sonnet next time, though.
I hear the NIH has lots of money. Time to find some American collaborators, perhaps.
The latest boost to the NIH is staying in the States. I checked. Twice. Fair enough I suppose… I just wish the Canadian government was boosting, rather than cutting, their investment in research.
Stephen, Mike’s comment is spot-on – it sounds like the reviewers really liked your proposal, it just wasn’t right for that competition. Revise and resubmit… the scientist’s mantra.
Sorry to hear it, Stephen. I am impressed, though, that the letter mentioned your lay summary — sounds like there are real people behind the desk there, and not just automatons.
Best of luck for the next attempt.
As you write, Stephen, this decision does not mean that your research is not good enough. It means that there is a mismatch between the amount of money available in the programme and the criteria used for applications. Plenty has been written on this topic, and the problem is by no means limited to this particular funder.
Your experience, again as you write, is very common – great referee feedback, but no funds.
I respect both your candour and the graciousness of your post.
You will soon be moving onwards and upwards.
Stephen, I’m sorry to hear that your grant application wasn’t good enough. This is a feeling that most of us know well enough and that even words of encouragement can’t make go away easily. But there will be times of celebration again.
Stephen – wonderful post, needed to be said. I think its the point of this blogging thing to shed some light on how science is done.
Cath – the right to revise and resubmit freely is causing issues at the moment. EPSRC have announced restrictions on who can resubmit an unfunded/low ranked proposal, and a 12 month ban on applications for repeatedly unsuccessful applicants, or those for whom the personal succeess rate is below 25 %. To ease pressure on peer review I understand…
Thanks again to all those who stopped by to comment (and even to those who didn’t!). My hand hovered over the submit button on this one for a while. Writing the post was kind of cathartic (in a small way) but I was certainly hesitant about washing my linen in public, so to speak. It was not a plea for pity, though the sympathy evident in the comments is welcome, but more a resolve to lay out one aspect of the reality as frankly as I could. As many have acknowledged, this is by no means a singular experience; indeed it is a normal part of the scientific enterprise. And I think it’s good that this should be more widely appreciated.
But declining funding rates are going to take their toll. There’s no hint yet of an Obama-style infusion of funds in the UK to help us out of the credit crunch. And, as Katherine mentioned, the EPSRC seems bent on adding a new dimension of misery to the scientific life. This was discussed on Friendfeed earlier in the week by Cameron Neylon, who had some imaginative suggestions for extricating ourselves from the current crisis.
I’m glad you did hit submit, Stephen. We all know the pain of rejection, and the number of projects that get rated as extremely good but yet don’t get funded has to be a worry. One wonders – are referees not critical enough? Or are there just too many brilliant scientists out there?
Too many brilliant scientists. Time for a cull. Why do you think Richard (I kill pigs before breakfast) Grant is returning to the UK…?
I am sitting on a panel in another country tomorrow. We have been informed that the success rate will be about 18% given the funds available. I expect there will be a number of unhappy people there too by the end of the week.
Rejection is getting more common but we must persevere.
Another hug. And a puppy picture.
By the way, the puppy is gonna get spayed tomorrow. Which kinda puts things into perspective.
Stephen, nice post. Always good to shed light on the “black box” of how science works. Sorry to hear about you grant. I’m at least pleased to hear you received some constructive feedback. I recently missed out on a 5 year fellowship for fairly big $$. It was a big deal, and the application took a lot of work (as always).
You can imagine my disappointment to receive 3 measly single-line dot points of feedback (no joking). Apparently they really liked the science, but obviously not enough!
So – am I the only one who thinks that the amount of work (and time) required to put a proposal together is out of proportion to the amount of money available? I’ve only submitted in the UK (NERC) and the US (NSF), both unsuccessfully (but with good ratings…), so my experience from that end is limited. I did review proposals from the ‘other side’ – the technical/logistical feasibility – in my previous incarnation. From both ends though, it seems that the whole thing could be made more concise, i.e. shorter, more to the point, maybe even a bit less detail (since details often end up being beside the point, from my experience).
Considering that, with less funding to go around, more time will have to be spend on proposal-writing, it seems that streamlinging the process somehow would be a wise thing to do so there is at least a little bit of time left for research… am I talking rubbish?
nicely worded post, and so sorry about the grant!
my supervisor gave a talk at a lab meeting a month ago on grant applications and the odds of getting funding. for the biological sciences at the ANU, something like 20% of grant applications were approved last year :S. He also mentioned that our dept head lost out on a million dollar grant because the application exceeded the word limit (someone at the dept office misinformed him on that one).
So – am I the only one who thinks that the amount of work (and time) required to put a proposal together is out of proportion to the amount of money available?
Definitely not. It’s a problem that seems to be getting worse. Like Brian I will be on a funding committee later in the year and it will be interesting to see the process from the other side. I think that will give a clearer idea of the lay of the land.
Linda – losing out in a fair fight is bad enough but losing out through someone’s incompetence is getting on for unforgiveable.
Sorry to hear about your fellowship application Darren – but don’t give up fighting!
All of us who write grant proposals are familiar with the rejection letter. We must be philosophical and recognise that we are all competing for a finite pot of resources. From the comments on this post, it looks as though a success rate in the region of 10% – 20% is the current going rate pretty much everywhere. When success rates are this low there will always be a certain amount of apparent irrationality in any decision as the success/failure threshold is close to the extreme value of the distribution. My solution is to recognise the current randomness in the decision making process and reduce the amount of time spent on fine tuning any possible bid for funds. Submit it rough and ready and expect the sound science to shine through. You can spend the freed up time doing other useful things.
Wise words Brian though I guess there is still a need to strike a balance between speed and rough-edgedness (if that is a word). As a reviewer I might start to suspect that someone who puts together a sloppy proposal might be equally sloppy about their science. But as you say, as long as the quality of the science remains visible, good judgement should prevail.
Bollocks. Sorry Stephen.
The party line for the NIH, here in the US, was “Use all three submissions”. Average funding rates are somewhere between 8-15%, but if you get the comments back and re-submit and re-re-submit you have a 75% of getting it funded.
Unfortunately, as from January 25th, there is now only one re-submission, so funding rates will plummet over here.
I’ve got an R01 in right now, and right on the back of that I started on another RC1 (for the stimulus money…A cool $1mil!), and as soon as that’s in, I’ll be looking for another. It is frankly ridiculous that you have spend 75% of your time sourcing and submitting for funding because there’s only a 20% of getting anything…
!
EuFMD-Erice2008 Global FMD Control: Antivirals? from Stephen Curry on Vimeo!
I watched this again and it cheered me up 🙂 Maybe it’ll help you too Stephen
Cheers Ian. The funding system in the UK doesn’t really follow the re-submission system that is common in the US. Some research councils not only reject but firmly ask you not to resubmit. This happened to our first application to the BBSRC to work on the FMDV protease back in 2002, just 1 year after a devastating outbreak in the UK! I protested and won the right to resubmit on that occasion – which was ultimately successful.
The video actually has done us some good because, in a rather roundabout manner but starting with contacts made at the meeting in Sicily (at which the film was shown), we have got in league with friends at the Institute for Animal Health and managed to secure some funding from DEFRA (UK Dept of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) to start looking for inhibitors. So it’s not all doom and gloom.
Oh, Stephen, I just saw this now. I am VERY glad you posted, because even in your distress you express the disappointment and the annoyance at a certain arbitrariness, so clearly. The comments are all relevant, but it will still rankle for a while. Once the proposal has been recycled and eventually accepted in some form (as I am sure yours will be), it will hurt less. But in the end, when your best and even sometimes your less-than-best has usually been more than enough, it is always a shocker when your best is not good enough, even if it is largely situational. Much sympathy to you and your group.
Thanks, Heather.
There was a pertinent letter in today’s Nature, from someone called Brian…
And a not so inpertinent letter from William Gunn as well on the same page. Commiserations Stephen, I was also involved with two grants that got knocked back last week. Again disappointing because they were damn good and in an important and exciting area. Doesn’t mean that the people who got funded weren’t better of course but it still knocks you back for a bit. And I am not so sure that the opposite response, what happens when you actually finally get something funded, is terribly healthy either.
Technically any absence from work in the UK for a “work related injury” for greater than three days is supposed to be reported to the Health and Safety Executive for possible investigation. One wonders how many reports there would be if you took all the academics who are “mentally absent” after a grant rejection?
Hope things are looking more cheerful or at least optimistic this week.
A late regretful punch in the shoulder, Stephen. If it’s any consolation (though I’m not sure why it would be), even your rec wasn’t enough to save my NEH proposal. I’m still not properly trained as a scholar — unlike fiction types, they not only want to know what you’re going to do, but they seem to care desperately about how you’re going to do it. Which I didn’t elaborate properly. With fiction you can say, “Well, the orchestra comes out of the rented zebra, and then, you know, that’ll wake everyone up and the marriage will happen,” and nobody stands around looking gassy and says, “Well, but how, exactly;” they just say, “Oh, OK,” trust that magic might well ensue, and wait to see.
Though the reviewers all thought I wrote very nicely. Not good enough, though, or not housebroken enough, or some combination.
One of the reviewers went on about how “the humanities component” was missing, and I must confess that I have no idea what a humanities component might be, or whether it’s a good idea to have one (apart from the money) in a book about some reasonably interesting people and how they figured out CO2->sugar.
_A late regretful punch in the shoulder, Stephen. _
Ow! Have you been working out!? 😉
Seriously though, thanks and my commiserations to you. I am frankly astonished that your proposal — which seemed to me very well thought out — didn’t fly. Hope you won’t give up.
Oh, and you still owe me that drink!
I think it must be at least two drinks by now, Stephen. And nope, no giving up, I’m used to working for free anyhow. (Though J Chem Ed is moving to the University of Iowa and the EIC wants an editor, so I am of course applying. If I get that one, not only will I be dizzy with work and packing a Blackberry, but I’ll have a grownup salary for the first time in my life.) So. Am driving up to Minneapolis in a couple of weeks to talk with Arthur Norberg, who did a nifty set of interviews with Calvin in the ’70s, and has probably heard more about the lab’s doings than any other outsider. And then off to Berkeley for a few weeks in July to go through the papers and talk to whoever else is still around. (That trip’s mostly funded, though, hooray.) And really that ought to do it, there’s an embarrassment of primary-source riches.
Also I’m going to stay in a posh hotel in Mpls and eat some nice food, the thought of which makes me very happy. And go to the Walker Art Center, which always has surprising things I like. I’ll take Small Girl with me to California, where I haven’t been in 30 years, almost. Am looking forward to taking both of us all around on weekends.
I haven’t applied for grants in a few months now, though there are some apps I ought to get together. I’m finding though that — for writer money, anyway — it’s often easier just to go get a job and earn the dough.