Playing in the sand: the joys of peer pressure

Posted by Peter van der Graaf

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you put 28 stressed-out early career researchers in a country hotel and gave them the option to either enjoy the available swimming pool, spa, snooker room, and pub with sun soaked terraces, or to write a full research proposal of up to 5,000 words with five unknown people in less than four hours and submit their work for scrutiny to a hard-nosed review panel of senior academics and professionals? Remarkably, when Fuse tried this out last week in the Sandpit event at Linden Hall, the result was five serious proposals, steeped in blood, sweat and tears, that somehow managed to persuade the review board to part with £2,500 of prize money.

The distractions were plentiful: giant Jenga, Connect4, indoor cricket, extensive breakfast and lunch buffets, (attempts at) nouveau cuisine diners, tough pub quizzes presided over by quiz-wizard communications officer Mark, log fires with arm chairs, and more coffee, tea and cakes than was healthy to consume, while hero professors bared all (at least their life stories) under large glass chandeliers. In spite of all these temptations, the researchers locked themselves up in their rooms, questioned the wisdom of their mentors, cross-examined policy and practice experts on their chosen subjects, argued and quarrelled at length with each other, and somehow managed to produce something that could pass for a research proposal.

Nerd peer pressure

The secret, you might wonder, is a classic tale of peer pressure, which early careers researchers are especially prone to. What the event allowed them to do was to learn this lesson (and many others in the course of it) and, even better, to enjoy it: a relaxing swim or pint in the pub is much more enjoyable after a chaotic session with five strong minded colleagues who are trying to reach a decision on what topic to choose for their proposal (only to find out later that they were allocated their third choice). A quiz or game of Jenga seems all the more exciting after struggling for three hours to put anything on paper, only to realise you have an hour left to write the remaining 5,000 words.

Therefore, a big thank you is in order for the organisers of the event, particularly to Avril, who had to miss out on many of the temptations due to a sudden bout of flu, and to quizmaster Mark, who clearly has too much free time on his hand to come up with the questions he did.

Things I’ve learnt from being on a funding board

Posted by Jean Adams

A few years ago I was invited to join a research funding board. I said yes, because: I was flattered to be joining the esteemed ranks of ‘important’ people on such committees; I thought it would look good on my CV; and everyone says you learn a lot about writing grant applications from being on a funding board.

So, in the best tradition of reflexive practice, I thought it might be time to try and work out exactly what it is I have learnt from the experience. These are just some initial reflections and I think they’re probably fairly specific to the committee that I am on. Whatever else you think, do not think that this is a set of rules for winning research funding. I am nowhere near confident enough in my own grant winning ability to start offering anyone else advice.

First, an outline of the process. There are 17 members of the committee, including three ‘lay’ members. All applications go through an initial screening process where a sub-committee of three members confirm the application is in scope. At the full board, each application (which contains around 50-60 pages of application form, references, reviewers’ comments, budgets etc) is assigned a lead and second academic assessor, and a lay assessor. The lead academic assessor summarises the application to the rest of the committee, summing up both strengths and weaknesses. The second and lay assessors are then invited to add any additional comments before opening up the discussion to the full membership. Each application gets 15 minutes and once the lead, second and lay assessors have done their bits, this means around 5-7mins of actual discussion. We deal with anything between four and 16 applications per meeting.

Being a member of this board takes up a lot of time. I started out trying to read all applications in detail prior to each meeting. Then I noticed that other committee members didn’t seem to be doing this, and that it was taking me up to two days per meeting. Increasingly, I find that I don’t have time to read each application fully, so I concentrate on the applications I’m lead or second for and skim the others. This means that perhaps only four people (lead, second and lay assessors, and chair) have a really good knowledge of each application. It seems inevitable that some good applications will get rejected, and some not so good ones funded, just because of how these four individuals respond to them.

I find the meetings pretty scary. To begin with I found it absolutely terrifying having to present my critique of applications to a room full of my elders and betters. Now I’m used to that, but am still not immune to the late nights, Sunday afternoons, commitment, and life-compromise that has gone into preparing every application. Often I find it scary how quickly we deal with them. I worry that we don’t treat the applications we receive as we would want our applications to be treated. But, realistically, how could we do it better? The process has to be manageable. We can’t let each meeting turn into a three-day critical appraisal marathon.

The committee know the guidance that applies to our funding scheme pretty well. I am always surprised that applicants don’t read, don’t act on, or somehow don't think this guidance applies to them. It is all fairly standard stuff on the difference between a pilot study and a full trial; the sort of inter-disciplinary working we expect; and the level of patient and public involvement required. Why would people think that it somehow isn’t relevant to them?

Reviewers’ comments rarely make or break an application. I was pretty surprised by this, because when you’re writing, and re-writing, a grant “what the reviewers will think” seems to be a key determinant of what goes in. Maybe I mis-interpreted “reviewers” too literally and what is meant is just “the people who will make the decision”. But, really, we read the applications and make our own decisions then see if the reviewers picked up anything important that we missed. The reviews are often pretty superficial, so we don’t always expect to find much additional information there. The confusion might be that the applicants are fed back the reviews in full, but just a bullet-point summary of the committee's thoughts. So I guess it might feel that these are what matter the most.

And that might be it for what I've learnt. Does any of this surprise you? I’m not sure it will change the way I approach grant writing in the future. But it’s certainly an interesting experience and the hotel the meetings are held in does good cake.

Nothing personal

Posted by Peter Tennant

When I was four feet tall, and each year felt like a Chinese dynasty, certain annual events used to really standout. The first hot day of summer. That strange day when there were flying ants everywhere. And the day when young adults would cry in the streets.

Apparently they had 'A-levels'. Or more accurately, they didn't.

These days, I find it harder to notice anything among the blur. Christmas is a long lunch. Summer a short weekend. But every now and again, grown men and women can still be found crying. The tears are usually less visible. But there’s no doubt about it, Fellowship applications are the A-levels of the early career researcher.

Vladimir Putin, after hearing he didn't get his fellowship

In a recent post, Fuse director Martin White listed personal funding (in particular getting a Fellowship) as one of 10 "easy" steps to achieve "rapid and effective progression" in a research career. It reminded me of one of those weird logic puzzles. If Andrea is lazier than Beth, and Catherine is greedier than Delia, how many cakes will Delia eat before Andrea has woken up? In short, getting a Fellowship may make career progression easier, but it's certainly not easy to get one. At least not in my experience.

At this point, my academic enemy would probably volunteer a simple explanation. Like the overly-blunt PE teacher to the short fat boy (sorry, boy of below average height and above average weight) who doesn't understand why he's so rubbish at the high-jump. But as much as we might blame my own academic physique, the statistics tell a bruising story. For every 5-10 applications, only one will be successful.

On the surface of it, this doesn't sound too bad. At least not in a world where there are hundreds of applications for any one academic position. But firing off a job application and applying for a Fellowship are like chalk and cheese. Occasionally cheese may have a chalky texture. But I guarantee, the chalk and pickle sandwich will never catch on.

To start with, Fellowship applications belong to that special category of things that completely take over your life. Partly because they take up so much time – I reckon I did about 200 hours on my NIHR Fellowship application, not to mention the countless time staring into space 'thinking' about it. And whenever I did stop thinking about it, a friend would usually ask: "Have you heard about your Fellowship yet?".

But it's the personal focus that makes a Fellowship application so uniquely challenging. Yes, the project needs to appear excellent. But so do you. And, sadly, not just in the eyes of your Mum (sorry Mum, but I'm afraid 'having good A-levels' isn't quite enough any more). Which means there's lots to write about how great you are and why you deserve the money more than anyone else. There's no place for modesty. So if I ever come across like a egotistical jerk, I'm just practising for my next application. Honest.

Before finishing, I would like to offer some advice. Some magic formula that boosts those slim chances of acceptance. But as a twice-reject, you might as well ask McDonald's to help solve the obesity epidemic. All I can advise, is you try to keep your emotional distance. They might call it personal funding, but (believe it or not) rejection is nothing personal.

Waiting and hoping

Posted by Jean Adams

So many things seem to take so long in research that I often find myself just waiting. Just waiting and hoping.

Obviously, I don’t just sit and wait and do nothing. I manage to find important and useful (I hope) things to fill my time whilst I wait. But at some deeper level I really am just waiting and trying not to be too distracted by the waiting.
 

Ian McKellan & Patrick Stewart in Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot', by Tristram Kenton



At the moment the waits that are preoccupying me most are decisions on a grant application and a paper.

The decision on the grant application has been made. I know this because the administrators were good enough to let me know that the funding board would meet to make a decision on 18th April. But then the decision would have to be ratified by the Department of Health, which would take about four or five weeks.

I know this all makes sense to somebody. And I know I can’t do anything about it. But come on! Five weeks to tell me about a decision that has already been made? After three months to make the decision. Is this supposed to be death by waiting? The researcher who can wait the longest without complaining gets the grant. I lose.

The paper is bothering me much more. Which is odd. If I don’t get the grant, there are no other options for funding the research. It just wont happen and that will be a couple of months of work down the drain. But if the paper isn’t accepted, I can try another journal. It’ll get published somewhere eventually (I hope). But I really want it to get published where I have sent it right now.

It isn’t even a research paper. It’s one of those 2000 word ‘analysis’ papers (AKA rants) saying something we’ve all thought for a while, but which only I had the patience to write down. Which makes it a bit like modern art – yes, anyone could have done it, but they didn’t.

The electronic submission system at the journal has flags to tell you what’s happened to your paper so far. They are pretty sparse, but informative enough to piece together a little story of my paper’s journey. It seems that my paper was initially considered by an editor who wasn’t quite sure about it and so sent it to another editor for a second opinion. But the second editor wasn’t sure either and so sent it to a further editor for a third opinion.

So far, not too promising.

But then the third editor (who maybe was a bit more senior than the other two and so found the decision easier to make?) agreed that the paper should be sent for peer review. Right now, the system tells me, the editors are looking for appropriate peer reviewers.

Which is nice. I have my fingers crossed for my little paper rant. I shall go on waiting. And hoping.

Submission

Posted by Jean Adams

A couple of weeks ago I was all set with an all-but-finished grant application sitting on my hard drive just waiting to be submitted when I got back from holidays. Yep, I was feeling pretty damn smug with my ‘done three weeks ahead of the deadline’ situation.


The submit button by Johannes P Osterhoff

The plan was that I would head off on holiday for 10 days. Whilst I was away, the university would do its thing, checking that I had included enough money for light bulbs and that I wasn’t planning on setting up a nuclear war head factory in the basement. Then I would come back and pack up my application, complete with university stamp of approval, and send the whole lot off to the Economic and Social Research Council for their consideration.

As it turns out, this was holiday spent destroying Leyland Cypresses at home, rather than traversing mountain ranges. [Wow– did you click that Leyland link? Turns out they were developed in Northumberland. Makes me feel slightly dirty by association.] I was, in a casual not really paying attention way, checking my email every day or so just to see what was going down. Generally, nothing much. But then on Friday I got an automated message saying my application had been rejected by the university.

Smug superiority extinguished. Serious panic situation ignited.

What am I supposed to do? What does rejected mean? Does that mean three months of work out of the window? I should probably go in to work to sort this out. But I can’t – my clothes are filthy, I stink of bonfire, I at least need to take a shower before I can go in to work. But it’s an emergency. I think I need to go.

Then I noticed the email from our finance assistant explaining that she had needed to make some minor changes and the only way to do it was to formally reject the application and re-submit for university approval.

Ok. Deep breath. We’re fine.

Tuesday rolls around. I’m all cleaned up and back at work. We have been through two more rejections and I’m starting to get used to them. But my grant still hasn’t been approved for submission. My co-applicant is starting to ask questions about what’s happening. I’m embarrassed that what was such a regimented enterprise has gradually collapsed into a dysfunctional blancmange.

And what are all these rejections about? Oh just little things like should the software licence be listed under directly allocated or directly incurred costs. Don’t ask – I have no idea and just do what I’m told. But the upshot is that I have spent a lot of nervous energy on things that I really want to say don’t matter. Although I guess they must do or else people wouldn’t be worrying about them.

All I want is a little bit of money to do a little bit of research that will hopefully be at least a little bit interesting and a little bit useful.

Just one comment

 Posted by Jean Adams

The comments have arrived.

Or, to be more accurate, the comment, singular, has arrived.

After deciding to respond to a call for applications for research funding, assembling an appropriate team, drafting the application, redrafting the application, filling in the accompanying form, redrafting the application again, and getting the whole thing through the university’s financial scrutiny, I finally submitted my application in early January.

And then there was radio silence.

For two months I heard nothing. I even sort of forgot about it.

Then a month ago, I got an email out of the blue telling me that the application would be sent for peer reviewed by “independent experts”. Which isn’t a bad thing. In fact, given that any application awarded funding has to be peer reviewed, being sent for peer review is definitely a better thing than not being sent for peer review. But the real gist of the email was that after peer review, I would be given an opportunity to respond to any particular questions that the reviewers had before the final decision on funding was made. There were clear instructions that there would be a “tight turnaround” from me being sent the questions to having to submit a response. When exactly this would occur was not specified.

This whole grant application thing is full of dramatic pauses, tight turnarounds and suspense.

But the waiting is now over. The comment has arrived. The turnaround is less than a week.

The comment runs along the lines of “this is an interesting idea and the methods look great, but I wonder if the sample size should be just a little bit bigger”. Which sounds like a fair comment given how much us researchers love arguing about what makes an appropriate sample size.

The thing is that my application had quite a long and detailed section on why the sample size chosen was just right. So now I find myself in a position of having to humbly, and politely, respond to the comment in a reasoned and careful way. When what I really want to do is scream: “Can’t you read? The sample size is justified in exceptional detail on page 13. You idiot.”

My Linus-neurotic streak isn't happy

But what is really bugging me is that there was just one comment. My neurotic streak doesn’t seem to like the idea of this at all. I know that the application will have been sent to more than one peer reviewer. So why did only one of them send a comment? It’s impossible that other reviewers thought the whole thing was perfect – academics just aren’t like that. Did the other reviewers feel that the application was so irredeemably bad that any response to comments I made wasn’t going to make any difference? What, exactly, is going on behind the scenes that I don’t know about?

I sent the comment to my co-applicants for their input, and because I hope they are less neurotic than me and might say something encouraging. The response:

“Just one comment? Is that a good sign?”

I love my job

Posted by Jean Adams

I have spent the last week trying my best to write another grant application in the few spare hours that manage to survive among the sea of student supervision, project meetings, teaching, and helping people to calculate Index of Multiple Deprivation scores that dominate my diary. What I want to do is focus on my grant application. What I’m actually doing is feeling harassed and resentful of all the other things I have to do. So I thought it might be time for a Pollyanna moment and reflection on all the things that make my job great. 

Pollyanna

1. My diary is flexible and varied. I don’t have a typical day or week or month. This makes it difficult when people ask me to tell them about "a normal week”. And sometimes it catches me out when I forget to check my diary and saunter on into work in jeans when I should be wearing a skirt (see point 2 below). But ultimately I love the variation. I particularly love that I am in charge and that I can say Fridays are working at home days without anyone thinking that it’s totally inappropriate. 

2. I get to wear jeans to work on most days. The novelty of this is wearing off a bit, but when I swapped clinical medicine for academia it was certainly one of the most amazing perks. I hate wearing stupid tights. I look fat and short in ‘smart trousers’. Besides, I am not very accomplished at clothes shopping, but I do know which jeans I like (Levi 571 slim fit since you asked - I don't think they make them any more but I have three pairs so am good for a while).

3. I get to speak to interesting people. It would be nice if I truly did spend my days sitting around, drinking coffee and speaking to interesting people. I don’t. However, I do, on occasion, get the chance to speak to some really interesting people. I am currently cultivating a collaboration with an evolutionary behavioural anthropologist sort of person who might be one of the cleverest and most interesting people I’ve ever met. I am also enjoying getting to know our not so new anymore health psychologists. And despite the stupid amounts of driving involved in a regional research centre, I do enjoy hanging out with many of my Fuse friends.

4. I get to travel. Actually I really don’t like the act of travelling. But I like what it gets me – which is mostly getting to speak to other interesting people. I'm just a public health gossip. On my travels recently I have met remarkably interesting and clever psychologists, GPs, sociologists and one guy who certainly thought he was interesting, but who I just found obnoxious.

5. I get to learn new things all the time. Right now I am most excited about the fact that I blagged the time and money to do a Postgraduate Certificate in Science Communication on work. Fantastic teaching, fantastic coursemates, annoying amount of travel and coursework. But it gave me the motivation to start this blog and maybe it will lead to some other exciting things soon.

So there. I am very grateful to the universe for setting it up so that I got this job. Thank you.

Now I need all the other nonsense to go away so that I can write my grant.

The application system

Posted by Jean Adams

I knew it was going to be bad so I ignored it.  But you can’t ignore important things forever.  Yesterday, I finally plucked up the courage to take a good, hard look at the form.  It was every bit as bad as predicted.

I am preparing a grant application for a national health research funding body.  It is endless.  There is the on-line form (34 pages).  Then there is the detailed project description (20 pages).  Then there is the one page project timetable appendix.  Finally, there’s the summary flow diagram appendix.  You can understand the need for this last appendix.  It must be hard for the committee to get their heads around all the detail that they receive for each application.  What they need is a simple, graphical summary of the project.

It is possible that research grant giving bodies feel that only researchers who can negotiate complex application systems deserve funding.  It has also crossed my mind that research grant giving bodies are holding a secret competition to see who can devise the most fiendish system.

Our response?  Our response is to protest that we are scientists:  it is not our job to fill in difficult forms.  We must have support.

Ignoring the boxes that really only I can fill in, I start to make the rounds of the people who might be able to help with my form.

First stop, my secretary.  That sounds a bit grandiose.  Really, she is the secretary that I have a 20% share of.  Could she maybe input all the CV information for me and the other grant applicants?  Of course, but when you say put in details of everyone’s current grants, do you really mean all of the 21 grants that Prof. Important from London has running?  Sorry.  Yes.

Next, the finance officer.  Who is also doing a part-time PhD in Medical Ethics.  Sure, she can make a start on the numbers.  This says draft finance at the top, are there likely to be some changes?  Sorry.  Yes.

Then, right at the end, after the scientific summary and the lay summary, after the CVs of all applicants, and after the endless breakdown of exactly how much money we are asking for, there are the tick boxes.  Oooh.  My favourite bit – just tick a few boxes to indicate your ethnic group and your scientific discipline.  It’s so easy!

I print out the form to get a handle on what’s left to be done.

Right at the end there is a page for signatures.  They need signatures?  This didn’t show on screen.  How am I supposed to get signatures from colleagues all across the country just before Christmas?  

Drafting

Posted by Jean Adams

Against my better judgement, I seem to have found myself leading a team developing a proposal for a call from the National Institute of Health Research on using incentives to encourage uptake of childhood vaccinations.

The application involves an on-line form with boxes for summary information on our project, CVs for each member of the team, and a detailed breakdown of the funding we are requesting.  There is also space to upload a detailed description of the research we are planning to do.

After spending far too much time searching through far too many guidance documents, I finally find what I am looking for: the detailed project description can be up to 20 pages.  Which means that the detailed project description should probably be at least 18 pages.  In the world of funding committees, blank space seems to be taken to imply blank brain.

So my next task is to draft 18-20 pages of detailed project description.

Somewhere else in the endless guidance I find suggested sub-headings.  Predictably, they are of limited relevance to the research that is being asked for.  An endless frustration in health research is that we are have to use systems designed from medical research – often drug trials – that just don’t fit what we do.

But I don’t have a degree in creative writing for nothing.  Actually, I don’t have a degree in creative writing at all.  Throughout my extensive, formal, higher education, I have been trained in writing concisely – in neat, legible, bullet points in medical records; in terse science-ese in journal articles.  No-one likes the written equivalent of verbal diarrhoea.  No-one except, perhaps, an NIHR funding committee.

The dream team

My colleague and I are planning on submitting an application to the National Institute forHealth Research in response to a call for proposals they have circulated on using incentives to increase uptake of childhood vaccinations.

But we two are merely a healthpsychologist and a publichealth academic .  NIHR always look for multi-disciplinary teams who bring the full range of knowledge and expertise needed to deliver on any particular project.  They like supporting junior researchers to develop their knowledge and skills, but they don’t like placing their trust in jack-of-all-trade research leaders.  They want experts.

The call requests an evidence synthesis on the effectiveness of incentives to increase childhood vaccinations and some qualitative work exploring acceptability.  By ‘evidence synthesis’ NIHR almost always mean a full-blown systematic review of published and unpublished literature.  So we are going to need an expert reviewer and perhaps a statistician to handle any meta-analyses.

Dr. Health Psychologist and I are both more experienced in quantitative, than qualitative, research.  To explore acceptability of incentives for vaccinations using interviews, we are going to need a social scientist with experience in interview methods.  We should also probably find someone who counts as an expert on community child health and perhaps someone who knows a bit about vaccinations!  Last but not least, we are going to need a public health policy wonk who can guide us through the practicalities associated with introducing what would be a significant change in current public health policy in the UK.

Over bleary eyed, Monday morning, coffee we draft out a list of our dream team.  Some of them our friends and colleagues who we hope will always want to work with us on new ideas.  Others are ‘big names’ – invariably from London.  The big name professors might want to work with us bright young things, but they might take a bit of encouragement.  NIHR will probably only fund one project on this topic and we have no idea how many other people around the country are thinking up dream teams of their own.  We have to move fast to get something drafted that we can send to potential collaborators to convince them to join our team – before someone else nabs them for their team.

Of course the drafting falls to me.  By the end of the week I have something scrappy that consists of more text highlighted in yellow for further discussion than bits I am sure of.  But it is something and I start to send it out.  Within a few hours I have had four positive responses.

With the dream team starting to take shape, the pressure is mounting.  There is no turning back now.

The dream team

The call

Posted by Jean Adams

It’s Friday afternoon.  I am working at home and starting to go through the work-weekend transition.  Distracted by my twitter feed, I click through on a tweet from the National Institute for Health Research to their latest funding calls.  NIHR are one of the UK’s largest funders of health research and an important source of grants for developing and evaluating public health interventions.  But their application systems are notoriously long winded and each new application needs enthusiasm and stamina.  Obtaining an NIHR grant really is a marathon, not a sprint.

Geoffrey Mutai ran the fastest marathon ever in Boston 2011

As I wait for the page to load, I secretly hope there is not going to be anything remotely relevant to me.  I don’t need the extra work of another grant application right now.

I scan through the list of topics they are currently interested in.  Second on the list is “11/97 Parental incentives for increasingupdate of immunisations in pre-school children”.  As it’s Friday afternoon, my eyes and brain are beginning to disconnect.  I have to read the title of the call twice, but it really does say “incentives” not “interventions”.  I have just won a four yearfellowship to explore the use of financial incentives for health promotion, so incentives are my thing.  As I click through and wait for the details of the funding call to come up, I hope again that this is not going to be what I think it is.  I really don’t want to find something that I have to apply for.  My fellowship is starting next month and I want to get on with that, not get side-tracked by new grant applications.

The NIHR call is for work that is uncannily like the first 18 months of my fellowship programme.  They want an evidence synthesis of the effectiveness of incentive schemes for increasing uptake of childhood vaccinations.  Then some qualitative work exploring acceptability of this sort of incentive programme.  My fellowship doesn’t focus on childhood vaccinations, but it will start with an evidence synthesis of the effectiveness of health promoting financial incentives in general, followed by some qualitative work exploring acceptability.

My very first thought is to close the page and ignore it.  But I don’t.  I can’t.  I write a quick email to my incentives partner in crime asking if he’s seen the call and if he thinks we should go for it.

“Sure”, he messages back, “looks interesting and like we would be perfectly placed to deliver.  Let’s chat on Monday and get a team together.”

At least I still have my weekend.