The success rate has been decreasing over years. Currently, the rate is about 7-9%. Most proposals will be "not funded".
With that background, on occasion we have a "feedback party" for a written proposal.
During last week's program meeting with several Professors and junior faculties, we had one of the grant feedback session. There are still a few weeks before the deadline, so some of the feedback may be incorporated in the final, submitted version of grant proposal.
Although I am not sending an RO1 for this cycle (aiming for Feb, after sending off current manuscript), such meeting is a good opportunity to work on grantmanship.
One of interesting comments was, "Propose what you want to do".
The comment was for an experiment. It tests central idea of the proposal. But it looks somewhat ambitious, to cover all the parameters.
"Ambitious" is not necessarily a positive word in grant review. Actually, it is a word saying "you look like trying to bite more than you can chew".
The comment was essentially saying to cut back on some endpoints and focus on what you really want to do, instead of trying to do everything at one time.
When we want to cover all the basis, the experiment will bloat. You'll need more manpower, endpoints, samples, analyses, and budget. But alas you cannot do all.
Hence, "Propose what you want to do", focusing on testing central idea, is an important viewpoint.
Adding some for people interested in medical research:
There are grants coming in different sizes (in budget and in time frame). An RO1 is one of big ones, for 5 years, 250k/yr (with modular budget). That is big enough for supporting the PI, a Research assistant and a postdoc or a student, while paying for reagents and other costs.
But come to think of it. Size of an RO1 is not too big. It is like running a tiny family business. It is not sufficient to do big science like sending someone to Mars.
Biomedical science is supported by many, relatively small research proposals. Each grant makes a "unit" of research.
Since each unit is small, in a sense, research infrastructure is fragile. If a grant for a rare disease is discontinued, the disease research may be gone entirely.
If you have a simple notion of "big evil government", in science practice, the idea is wrong. If you apply wrong idea on the research ecosystem, you can kill the system, along with your cure for cancers or Alzheimer's in the near future. Be careful.
