AZ Faust

Ignore the research strategy at your own peril

At this point, I would rather someone tell us they hate the projects than the soul crushing "meh."

Take it all with a grain of salt (as I know you will).

It's easy to say "you need an advocate" - the rub is in how you actually use your 1+12 pages to turn someone into an advocate. At this point, I am just aiming for strong emotions, one way or the other. Tired of middling 20s.

I wonder what Justice Stewart thought of Robert Mapplethorpe's work?

At this point, I would settle for any sort of coherent definition of "cutting edge research."

This drives me nuts. I worked with several oncology teams who analyzed their internal patient outcomes based on race and ethnicity and found NO DIFFERENCES when patients are treated at the same location. This spans three different tumor types at three different institutions. It's not biological.

Also, if structural racism is not a “legitimate” hypothesis because it can’t be falsified, what is HIS alternative hypothesis that explains the broad array of observed disparities?

His answer would give away whole the game: resegregating science and who science serves

Another day of repeating the mantra, there are no banned words, just words that will prevent an otherwise fundable application from being funded…

I'm reminded of the time when I worked in radiation oncology where all the MDs and biologists thought the most mundane radiation physics was super cutting edge and innovative.

And to be clear, the lack of the definition comes from JB not DM. DM had the term in quotes for a reason.

This is definitely worth your time at the end of the workday. If for no reason other than to infuriate you at the lack of the definition for "cutting edge."

I don't think most people would say "it was fine before." Getting a sub 10%ile grant is really hard. But having 5th %iles go unfunded just feels bewildering. It's not that they are objectively better than the 10%iles, but getting 5 requires enormous luck and even that is now not good enough.

Understandable. Thinking of you and wishing you an uneventful procedure and a speedy recovery.

I haven't worked in a lab for over 15 years but even back then we always went by the protein size and whenever possible, used a knockout or deficient cell line as a negative control. This was wet lab cell biology 101. Is that no longer the standard?

As a teacher, every year I struggle with administration pushing the latest tech. I want books in hands. I want pencils in hands. If we are going to use tech bring back actual keyboarding classes.

Anyway, as my colleague is starting to wrestle with this task, and I am continually answering questions that one just has to know from experience... spare a grateful thought for your grants admin who is generally underpaid and underappreciated, yet critical for your grants going successfully out

(I have a whole session of those, and I am sure other people do too, but in my experience, it's the session that's least attended)

And even if you are faculty, sure, you can go to a workshop on the basics of grant writing, but how often do they discuss supporting documentation at those workshops?

So much of what we do in the grants business is just stuff you have to learn on the job. The NIH grant guide works only if you have a lot of experience with grants. There remains no class, no training that can teach one how to do grants administration

I've recruited some help in attempting to use genAI to generate grant checklists. A couple of thoughts are swirling in my head:
1) genAI remains incredibly poor at generating things where accuracy is important;
2) NIH grant instructions are terrible for inexperienced users

Biotech investor set to lead US National Science Foundation If confirmed by the US Senate, Jim O'Neill would be the first non-scientist or engineer to lead the agency, a big funder of US basic research.

O'Neill, an investor in anti-aging technology who worked on HHS policy, would be the first non-scientist or engineer to lead NSF. His background will be a 'major concern' to the science and technology community, former NSF director Neal Lane told me.

@maxkozlov.bsky.social and I report:

No arguments from me. Tax them all.

Although, parts of Europe and parts of Asia do show that there is a way to compromise. You can provide your populace with a basic safety net, impose high taxes on extremely wealthy individuals, and still have a happy, productive, and competitive society (including economy).

I'm really not a communist, even though @mikesortarocks.bsky.social likes to pretend I am, but sometimes I read articles like this and go "yeah, I get why people find Marx appealing."

The fact that none of these good news are related to NCI has not escaped my attention...

And the 4th %ile is not NCI either

We were already told that the 4th %ile will be funded, the 5th we're not sure of (not NCI, but not an institute that's in good shape currently either)

Never underestimate the power of good news. Even when it's rare.

This past month and a half has been a sh*t show, personally and professionally. But yesterday, one client got a 4th %ile and one got a 5th %ile and folks, you have no idea what that news has done for my spirit.