In regards to last week's reading I think one important factor was over-looked and that was that was the different changes that each scientist had to make to improve his chances of receiving the grant, and a lot of these changes were based solely on who they were. Crews is a well known scientist who was reapplying for a grant he had won before, Boles was a relatively new scientist trying to impose his own theories outside of the established discipline. For sure, grant proposals are tedious and cumbersome things, but essential to anyone who requires funding to do his/her job, so it is expected that the grant writer must be clear, concise, and follow procedures accordingly.

Here's my take on the situation. Crews had very few changes to make. All he was asked to do was further explain how his studies would be beneficial in the future, and aside from changing Passive to Active voice within the proposal itself, the tour of his lab pretty much secured the grant. Why? Because he was an established and known scientist in his field who was contributing something directly to his discipline, which is exactly what the grant funders wanted, but he was able to conduct the study he wanted.

Bole's was unsuccessful in his attempt because the changes he had to make were methodological, not grammatical or something as simple as further explaining something that has already been proven as in Crew's case. He was a new name to his discipline and instead of trying to contribute something to it directly, he was too honed in on pursuing a study that was based solely on his interests but did not have enough critical references to support it. Bole's proposal had to be restructured to meet the criteria of the grant funders.

A lot of people get discouraged about grant writing thinking that it is such a limited and rigid structure that receiving a grant is incredibly difficult and receiving the actual funding requested is almost unheard of, but yet, there are success stories, and a lot of them. The way in which grants are organized ensures that different disciplines are studied and explored, that the money given is not wasted, that the research will serve a greater good, and that there is a strict guideline to follow so that the money is allocated properly and monitored accordingly.

I just thought it was interesting the way in which these two scientists approached their grants in different ways; especially Bole's who at the end realized that his initial reasons for applying for the grant were not very good and he himself had to restructure his own research methods because the grants exposed the flaws he might have never seen. So in a way, grants also prevent researchers from wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars and exorbitant amounts of time by finding potential flaws beforehand.