madscience

I wish I had seen this editorial in the Scientific American on April Fools Day, I would have posted it then. The SA editorial was mentioned today in a NY Times editorial about the proposed academic freedom laws. The current political climate really, really scares me. So on that note, heres the update on my NIH grant.

But a little background first: Its much more likely to NOT get $$ from NIH. About half of the grants submitted to NIH are deemed worthy enough to be passed on to a review committee. The review committee scores those grants, and you generally know what a good score is, but you dont really know what the actual cut-off score for getting the $$ is until a few months after the review - the NIH has to decide what their cut-off score is going to be (based on a bunch of things I could tell you about if you really want to know). So I got my score, and it's in the goddamn borderline!!

This is good, and bad, and ultimately frustrating news. This means I wont know until mid-June if Ill get the $$. Now keep in mind that I have been working on this project since January 2004. And the deadline for this submission was Nov. 1, 2004. This is a VERY LONG TIME to be in limbo about something that is SUPER IMPORTANT for your career. And a very long time to be putting a lot of work & hope into something that ultimately might be rejected.

I keep trying to remind myself that its great to even get as far as the borderline (argh, Madonna just popped into my head). But really, the end result is whats most important. So everyone please send these vibes to the NIH: give MadScience the money, give MadScience the money, give MadScience the money . . .