Instead of a vague ‘effect’, state which readouts you will test and whether you expect an increase or a decrease

   

Would you give 300,000$ to someone who aims to “Study the effect of DNA in the brain?” Probably not – it’s much too vague, right? Yet many funding applications present scientific aims that are almost as vague, compromising their chances of funding. Conversely, if your aim is sharply defined, you will stand out from other candidates. Let’s see how to achieve this.

[NB: this post applies to projects that test hypotheses, i.e. to most fundamental projects, but it'll also be useful if you present applied projects – many of which include at least one hypothesis].

1) Avoid these overused, vague words: ‘role’, ‘impact’, ‘effect’...

When I started training researchers to design funding proposals, I was puzzled because I often encountered statements I could not understand. Researchers wrote that they would:

• They don’t correspond to terms of the scientific method. You should aim to determine whether something causes, activates, regulates, is necessary, is a limiting factor, etc. The ‘Importance’ of a phenomenon is just not a scientific concept.
• They are vague and don't help reviewers understand what exactly will be tested in the proposal. Which is the topic of the next section.

2) Instead of vague aims, state your hypothesis and readouts

Research funders, especially for fundamental research, love hypothesis-based research and dislike ‘fishing expeditions’ in which they have no idea of what can be expected.

This often surprises junior researchers because funders claim that they want innovations, of which fishing expeditions are a primary source. After all, the Viking Leif Erikson (re)discovered America precisely during a fishing expedition. But in fact, though they do not say it explicitly, most funders prefer incremental innovations – testing one hypothesis at a time, so to speak.

Therefore, you should be careful to clearly present a hypothesis, for example:

In that case, I have bad news for you. Using an unbiased technique might be a genuine scientific strength of your project, but most funders won’t see it that way, again because of the lack of a hypothesis.

Consider the advice given by Jonathan Chernoff, who managed to keep his lab funded for 30 years:

"Unbiased screens are the wellspring of discovery; never propose one."

Ok, back to our sheep, as the French say (i.e. let's get back to the main topic. I know, it sounds like a Welsh, Irish or Kiwi proverb ;-). When composing your hypothesis, you should also state your a priori. Let’s see why.

3) State your a priori – do you expect an increase or a decrease?

Many proposals contain this kind of aim:

We’ll study how our candidate drug X affects the immune response

The vague verb ‘affects’ annoys reviewers, who are busy people and would like to be immediately told whether the candidate drug is meant to activate or to inhibit the immune response. (This point is obvious for applicants, but reviewers cannot guess it…).

So you should always make your a priori clear, i.e. which way you think the effect will go:

We’ll study how our candidate drug X activates the immune response

Applicants almost always have an a priori, since otherwise they wouldn't be in a position to apply for a grant. For example, they are unlikely to have a credible candidate drug if they don't have enough preliminary data to know whether it should activate or inhibit the immune response...

1. Your project should have the potential to conclusively prove whether the hypothesis is right or wrong. In other words, it should be able to settle the matter, be published, and thus advance the field.
2. Testing the hypothesis should not be your first objective (i.e. it should not be done in the first work package), because if the hypothesis is wrong, the project will stop there. Therefore, you should structure your project so that the hypothesis is tested only in objective 2 or 3.

In summary

OK, let’s start from a typical vague scientific aim and see if we can convert it into a clear aim using the 3 tips given above:

Characterize the role of ZAK signaling in blastoma chemoresistance.

As you can see, this aim contains no hypothesis or readout – only a vague term, ‘role’, is stated.

Now let’s include a hypothesis, the direction of the effect you expect (i.e. your a priori), and precise readouts:

Determine whether ZAK signaling increases blastoma chemoresistance, proliferation or migration.

Can you see how much clearer this sounds to reviewers? Having a precise aim creates a favorable first impression on the funding panel and greatly increases your chances of success.

You may have noticed that once again, the advice above follows Maeda’s simplification algorithm. That is, you should remove the meaningless (i.e. vague aims) and replace it with the meaningful (i.e. your hypothesis, your readouts, and the direction of the effect you expect).

[If you haven’t read the post about Maeda's algorithm, I highly recommend you do so now, as the procedure it describes is central to all aspects of communicating your research: designing a research funding proposal, but also scientific articles, talks, CVs, paper figures, talk slides…]

Actionable points

--> Take a look at your research proposal(s) and check these 3 points:

1. Do you use vague words for your scientific aim(s), such as ‘function’, ‘role’, ‘impact’, ‘effect’, ‘importance’, ‘affects’, ‘is involved’ ?
2. Do you state a precise hypothesis? Is it presented in the summary? Does it have a devoted heading?
3. Do you indicate your a priori, i.e. which direction you anticipate (an increase, decrease, etc) for the effect you will investigate?

If you have replied 'No' to the first and ‘Yes’ to the others, congratulations! In some fields such as biology, almost every proposal fails the checks #1 and #3. (If you were wondering, the most precise researchers tend to be physicists. But even they can still present a pretty vague overall aim in the title of their application).

I hope the above advice is useful. I think it is key to writing competitive funding proposals, yet I have never come across it in 10 years of reading books and articles about research funding –  it is original to this blog.

Have a nice day and fruitful research.

David