The 100 h rule

Its done – well almost. Just a summary to write and then push the button to upload to Research Services at Massey for a final check before they send on to the Royal Society. I have a ‘rule’ that you need to spend around 100 h working on a Marsden full proposal. My log for the present one is around 90 h but that does not take account of all the preliminary work before seriously starting to write it. But there is a lot more to preparing a good grant than spending lots of hours on it. First you must have a really good idea supported by some preliminary data. Then you need to crystallise that into a good hypothesis and good biological questions. It must read like well written prose so it’s easy for the committee and referees to assimilate. I doubt most members of the committee for the panel my grant proposal is going to will know what a sclerotium or a stroma is! One exception noted. At least you hope your referees will be but don't count on it. I had a dream run with Marsden grants getting 5 in a row from 2000 through to 2010. Then my second round proposal fell over last year and was not funded even though I applied the 100 h rule! After booting my office door I sat down a day or two later and rationalized why it was not funded. I concluded that it simply was not a compelling enough story even though it was founded on good science. That's what you are up against from a fund that has an overall success rate of around 8% (up to 25% for the second round). Lets hope this one will fair better. I think the story is compelling and I have assembled a great international team to work with but on Friday I was not so chipper – I hit the wall. One of my colleagues pointed out a flaw in the logic of what we were proposing. At this point I deleted large sections and rewrote them. There is one component of the story that is complex and committees hate complex. With the help of Daniel, whose project this proposal is based on, we turned this one around and now have what I think is a compelling story. Working closely with someone on the writing helps a lot. This time it was Daniel who I enjoyed working with. We both learnt a lot in the process. Lets hope it is a winner.