Post by Aureliano Buendia on Jun 9, 2010 10:01:23 GMT -5
Now is the silly season for many of us who count on research funding from the US National Science Foundation. Most of us are receiving rejections of the research grant proposals that we spent most of the winter break writing, and many months or years of field and lab work preparing. We are scientists with exemplary records, working at top institutions, publishing in and editing for the finest peer-review journals in the world. And we open the emails from NSF to find that our ideas are "Not Competitive." These are the same ideas that will be and have been published in top journals and won us tenure at top institutions.
This situation is frustrating and untenable. We KNOW our science and writing are good. We don't appreciate having to waste months of our lives writing and rewriting proposals in the hope that we can be one of the lucky 8% to be funded in our program. We'd rather do our science.
We don't appreciate seemingly capricious decisions from uncommunicative program officers, who themselves are overworked, underpaid, and doing their best in a broken system.
We protest a system that awards absurdly huge grants to a few select researchers and institutions, while letting many investigators with busy schedules waste their time year after year chasing funding in programs with success rates around 10%.
Please join the discussion of current NSF practices and policies in the forums entitled "Problems" and "Solutions."
Begin new threads to address issues not covered in current threads. Use this forum to ask general questions and make general comments.
Our goals are to provide a safe and anonymous forum for discussion of touchy yet important issues. Most of us would never have the chance to discuss these issues openly because we would fear (whether justly or unjustly) harming our chances for future NSF funding.
Rules for posting:
-Keep all postings clean, polite, and constructive.
-Anonymity is encouraged and respected by the board administration.
-Ad hominem attacks will not be tolerated.
-Opposing views will not be censored unless they violate the rules. Rigorous discussion is encouraged.
Please note that this board has no official affiliation with NSF or any other institution, and the views expressed herein represent those of the posters, and no one or nothing else.
This situation is frustrating and untenable. We KNOW our science and writing are good. We don't appreciate having to waste months of our lives writing and rewriting proposals in the hope that we can be one of the lucky 8% to be funded in our program. We'd rather do our science.
We don't appreciate seemingly capricious decisions from uncommunicative program officers, who themselves are overworked, underpaid, and doing their best in a broken system.
We protest a system that awards absurdly huge grants to a few select researchers and institutions, while letting many investigators with busy schedules waste their time year after year chasing funding in programs with success rates around 10%.
Please join the discussion of current NSF practices and policies in the forums entitled "Problems" and "Solutions."
Begin new threads to address issues not covered in current threads. Use this forum to ask general questions and make general comments.
Our goals are to provide a safe and anonymous forum for discussion of touchy yet important issues. Most of us would never have the chance to discuss these issues openly because we would fear (whether justly or unjustly) harming our chances for future NSF funding.
Rules for posting:
-Keep all postings clean, polite, and constructive.
-Anonymity is encouraged and respected by the board administration.
-Ad hominem attacks will not be tolerated.
-Opposing views will not be censored unless they violate the rules. Rigorous discussion is encouraged.
Please note that this board has no official affiliation with NSF or any other institution, and the views expressed herein represent those of the posters, and no one or nothing else.
