Bravo!

Theoretically the comment  "if you can't write it, you can't do it" is
valid, but this is the real world where competition for funding is very
tight. Increasingly we need every competitive advantage we can get to secure
funding and I consider a proposal that is clearly and concisely written,
grammatically correct, and easy to approach to have a  significant advantage
over the same science that is not. I have seen first hand evidence of
proposals worked on by a grants and scientific publications office that
would not have been funded had they come directly from the PI.
I think that this is very relevant when you have a PI who's first language
is not English. While the language of science is somewhat universal, the
English language is not, and we should penalize brilliant scientists for it.

Just me 2 cents

-David
David A Higginson, ACMA
Administrative Director
1120 Marshall Street
Little Rock, AR 72202
Tel : (501) 320-3757
Fax: (501) 320-3547
Email : xxxxxx@exchange.uams.edu
Web : http://achri.ach.uams.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Liane Reif-Lehrer [mailto:xxxxxx@BBRI.HARVARD.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 1998 10:50 AM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Do people need help with proposal writing?

In response to the comment by

Betty Farbman
Teachers College 212-678-4106

to the effect that:  "if you can't write it, you can't do it"

I would have once been tempted to agree, but after serving on an NIH
(National Institutes of Health) study section (grant review board) and
helping people with grant applications for about 20 years since then, I
have certainly come across more than a few bright faculty members who could
tell me quite lucidly about their research -- but what they committed to
paper did not at all "tell the story" -- and in one case, was totally
unintelligeable!

I think we need to understand that some of the young professional people
were never taught to do expository writing.  In addition, some of them do
not know how to follow a set of instructions -- especially when those
instructions are written by people who were not trained in expository
writing!

Times are changing:  One well-dressed young man (age about 35) in one of my
workshops had no idea what a noun is or what a verb is.  I jokingly asked
him how his spelling was and he quite seriously replied, "Oh, I can't spell
at all, but it doesn't matter because I have a spell checker."

 Slightly off the subject, but rather instructive:  a professor I know,
recently hired a very young secretary.  When, at one point, he asked her to
type something on a typewriter, she wanted to know where the screen was!

The bottom line is:  there are some very bright young people out there with
very good ideas -- but some of them do not know how to communicate -- even
verbally -- and a larger number don't have the skills to put their thoughts
on paper in a way that others can understand.

LRL

Liane Reif-Lehrer, PhD
PO Box 645
Belmont, MA  02178
Tel: 781-863-1117;  Fax:  781-674-0436