I agree completely with what you've said.  Too many times I have seen
PI's "pass off" the writing to someone else and the result is often less
than satisfactory.

Sharon Comvalius
Teachers College, Columbia University
xxxxxx@columbia.edu

On Fri, 5 Jan 1996, Peter Dolce wrote:

> This experience may be relevant: Investigators at other schools have
> sometimes written inexperienced faculty members at our institution
> into their applications with the understanding, "You don't have to
> write anything.  When the grant is made, we'll just expect you to
> execute the work described in the application."  Without exception these
> projects have floundered because the PI who does not writing lacks
> emotional commitment to the project.  For example, it's not true
> he or she doesn't have to write anything.  She must supply Other
> Support information, prepare a biographical sketch, and shepherd the
> application through our grant processing, contracting, and regulatory]
> procedures; later she must actually do the work and write up the results.
> A faculty member who writes nothing almost alwasy underestimates the
> amount of time the experimentation and associated duties will consume.
>
> People who advocate grant writers sometimes seem to believe the
> scientist's job is to conceive "The Idea," and that words and numbers
> are a cosmetic that make the idea look pretty, and can be applied by
> mere functionaries like grant writers.  But the successful scientists
> I know without exception regard writing as a SCIENTIFIC skill in which
> they take pride (even if they find it distasteful); and that The Idea
> has no existence independent of the words and numbers that express it;
> thus the only person who can write a grant for endocrinologist A is
> endocrinologist B, and then it ceases to be A's application.
>
> Development offices sometimes hire grant writers, and such persons
> can indeed write applications for research "infrastructure" or "development"
> or even training; but anyone who's hired to conduct experiments ought
> to be able to write her own applications.
>
> EDITING is another story. Many applications could be improved by skilled
> editing.  But most of the requests fro grant writers I've encountered come
> from people whose idea is no crisper than "I want to look at enzyme
> X in patients with prostatic hyperplasia."  They need help, as you
> suggest, from another scientist, not from a wordsmith.
>
>
>