This could be a tough funding year for all of us

Last week, NIH released a notice explaining its operation plan in the event of sequestration.  The brief memo explains that, in the event of a sequestration, funding will be significantly cut.  However, even if the sequestration does not happen, we are looking at cuts in funding across the board.  Does this mean you should give up on your plan to become a successful, federally-funded researcher?  Should you practice saying "do you want fries with that?"  No, if anything, you should try even harder.  Funding is about to get even more competitive than it has become in recent years, but if you are putting together an exemplary proposal with great potential for significance and innovation, you should have no reason to despair.

Sample Project Leadership Plans for Multiple PIs

Are you sharing the PI responsibility with another scientist?  Having 2 Principal Investigators can be a benefit to certain types of projects.  Given other responsibilities such as teaching and other research projects, it can also be helpful to have another person to share the workload.  NIH provides some examples of Multiple PI Project Leadership Plans here.  Why is this a necessary component of the application?  I believe it is in part because department heads and NIH personnel became frustrated with the messy divorces that can happen between PIs sharing equal responsibility for a project.  I have seen disagreements in approach, methods, and even interpretation of findings turn into all-out battles for control of projects.  Keep this in mind as you draft your leadership plan.  Be sure that one PI will have final say over certain types of matters and, if possible, designate an impartial third party or faculty committee to help make decisions when no agreement can be reached.  You will not regret it!

Double Dipping, Research Style

A new article in Nature brings up the practice of double dipping in research funding, where researchers obtain multiple grants for nearly identical projects.  While this practice is discouraged and technically not permitted, the plain truth is that it happens all the time.  This article points out that very little is done to check for duplication of funding between federal agencies.  It is up to researchers to report the duplication or overlap of funding.  Interestingly, more than one individual mentioned in this article admitted to submitting the exact same materials to multiple federal agencies.  Having a little more background knowledge than what is written in this article, I can attest to the fact that the duplicate submissions may have something to do with lack of time or motivation on the part of the PI to make edits or changes before submitting a modified version of an application to a different funding agency.  In other words, while some materials such as the budget may be different, researchers who duplicate submissions of projects focused on the same aims often fail to take the time to modify the abstract and other materials when seeking additional sources of funding for their projects.   

Finding the answer requires asking the question

I understand that the title of this blog post has me sounding a little like Yoda, but one fundamental piece of information that guides the entire research grant proposal is the research question.  Without a clear, well-defined question, how can one expect to obtain an answer through research?  While drafting a hypothesis is something that was probably covered in your elementary school science class, it is easy to forget the importance of refining this piece before setting out to write a large, complicated research plan. 

One method of drafting the research question that is used often in health sciences research is PICO.  The letters stand for Patient Problem, Intervention, Comparison, & Outcome.  Using the PICO framework can help you to logically think through the problem you are hoping to address through your research.  If you are struggling to draft your research plan, perhaps going back and applying this method will help you to realize that your research question is too broad, too narrow, or perhaps too insignificant.  If you are following my advice and have started working on your proposal far in advance of the next deadline, you should have plenty of time to make adjustments as needed!