We spend a fair amount of time talking about grant strategy on this blog. Presumably, this is a reflection of an internal process many of us go through trying to decide how to distribute our grant writing effort so as to maximize our chances of getting funded. After all we have better things to do than to write grants.
So we scrutinize success rates for various ICs, various mechanisms, FOAs, etc as best we are able. We flog RePORTER for evidence of which study sections will be most sympathetic to our proposals and how to cast our applications so as to be attractive. We worry about how to construct our Biosketch and who to include as consultants or collaborators. We obsess over how much preliminary data is enough (and too much*).
This is all well and good and maybe, maybe….perhaps….it helps.
But at some level, you have to follow your gut, too. Even when the odds seem overwhelmingly bad, there are going to be times when dang it, you just feel like this is the right thing to do.
Submitting an R01 on very thin preliminary data because it just doesn’t work as an R21 perhaps.
Proposing an R03 scope project even if the relevant study section has only one** of them funded on the RePORTER books.
Submitting your proposal when the PO who will likely be handling it has already told you she hates your Aims***.
Revising that application that has been triaged twice**** and sending it back in as a A2asA0 proposal.
I would just advise that you take a balanced approach. Make your riskier attempts, sure, but balance those with some less risky applications too.
I view it as….experimenting.
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*Just got a question about presenting too much preliminary data the other day.
**of course you want to make sure there is not a structural issue at work, such as the section stopped reviewing this mechanism two years ago.
***1-2%ile scores have a way of softening the stony cold heart of a Program Officer. Within-payline skips are very, very rare beasts.
****one of my least strategic behaviors may be in revising grants that have been triaged. Not sure I’ve ever had one funded after initial triage and yet I persist. Less so now than I used to but…..I have a tendency. Hard headed and stupid, maybe.
It is one of the most perplexing things of my career and I still don’t completely understand why this is the case. But it is important for PIs, especially those who have not yet experienced study section, to understand a simple fact of life.
The NIH Program Officers do not completely understand what contributes to the review and scoring of your grant application.
My examples are legion and I have mentioned some of them in prior blog posts over the years.
The recent advice from NIAID on how to get your grant to fit within a modular budget limit.
The advice from a PO that PIs (such as myself) just needed to “write better grants” when I was already through a stint on study section and had read many, many crappy and yet funded grants from more established investigators.
The observation that transitioning investigators “shouldn’t take that job” because it was soft money and K grants were figuring heavily in the person’s transition/launch plans.
Apparently honest wonder that reviewers do not read their precious Program Announcements and automatically award excellent scores to applications just because they align with the goals of the PA.
Ignorance of the revision queuing that was particularly endemic during the early part of my career (and pretend? ignorance that limiting applications to one revision round made no functional difference in this).
The “sudden discovery” that all of the New Investigator grants during the checkbox era were going to well-established investigators who simply happened not to have NIH funding before, instead of boosting the young / recently appointed investigators.
An almost comically naive belief that study section outcome for grants really is an unbiased reflection of grant merit.
I could go on.
The reason this is so perplexing to me is that this is their job. POs [eta: used to] sit in on study section meetings or listen in on the phone. At least three times a year but probably more often given various special emphasis panels and the assignment of grants that might be reviewed in any of several study sections. They even take notes and are supposed to give feedback to the applicant with respect to the tenor of the discussion. They read any and all summary statements that they care to. They read (or can read) a nearly dizzying array of successful and unsuccessful applications.
And yet they mostly seem so ignorant of dynamics that were apparent to me after one, two or at the most three study section meetings.
It is weird.
The takeaway message for less NIH-experienced applicants is that the PO doesn’t know everything. I’m not saying they are never helpful….they are. Occasionally very helpful. Difference between funded and not-funded helpful. So I fully endorse the usual advice to talk to your POs early and often.
Do not take the PO word for gospel, however. Take it under advisement and integrate it with all of your other sources of information to try to decide how to advance your funding strategy.
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