How Not to Write a Grant

What happens when six scientists working in five separate fields serve on a number of grant committees?  Apparently they see a great many truly terrible proposals full of lame-brained and sloppy mistakes -- and they remember the very worst of these goofs.

The exasperated band has now compiled actual examples of applicants' ineptitude into a tongue-in-cheek list of "proven techniques" for not getting funded and published it in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  

Some of their tips are simple enough: "Don't use spell-check."  Or : "Use very few subheadings.  Grant reviewers are smart enough to figure out where subheadings should be.  A single multipage paragraph is fine."  

Some are more global: "Focus your grant entirely on your own study species and/or area of focus.  Knowledge for knowledge's sake, right?  Dealing with problem of general interest is a waste of time.  A good panelist will be able to discern the global impacts of the research without being led by the hand."

Others are all-encompassing:  "Always assume that the panel and the program director will give you the benefit of every doubt."  

But especially importantly, none appears to have much bearing on the quality or significance of the actual research being proposed; instead they have to do with careless writing, slovenly formatting and thoughtless preparation.  And together they constitute an amazing catalog of how just how dumb and self-defeating smart people can be.