Note for PIs

If your lab requires a “weekly support group” meeting, there is no scenario wherein you are doing it right.

On showing the lab your grant proposals

I think I’ve done a post on this before but it arose again on the Twitts today.

As a lab head, I give all the trainees access to our funded grant proposals..and often the applications I am working on. I would certainly give them to someone in my lab upon request if I had forgotten to email something to them (or not bothered in the case of our current firehose of applications).

I am at a considerable loss to imagine why any lab head would have a problem doing this.

Things I find odd in academia: PIs who don't share grants – in prep or funded – with trainees working on project. #lifeinscience

— biochem belle (@biochembelle) July 2, 2013

@biochembelle yeah that's weird. "Don't" or "won't"?

— Drug Monkey (@drugmonkeyblog) July 2, 2013

@drugmonkeyblog I've observed both. Won't, as in refuse or change subject when asked – even funded proposals.

— biochem belle (@biochembelle) July 2, 2013

Does anyone have any new insight on why a PI would not make the funded grant proposals available? Doesn’t everyone in the lab need to have at least some understanding of what is supposed to be accomplished?

Now, benign neglect, I can sort of understand. Not all the PIs out there understand how important it is to get the trainees thinking about the grant cycle as early as possible. Opinions vary on that. Some would rather trainees not be “distracted”. I get that…but I think it outmoded.

But outright refusal to hand the grant over if asked? That is odd….almost to the point of suspecting shenanigans.