An unfortunate fact about academia is that you do tend to be punished for being overly honest. e.g. "Our lab is #1 in the world at X." usually translates rough

An unfortunate fact about academia is that you do tend to be punished for being overly honest. e.g. "Our lab is #1 in the world at X." usually translates roughly to, "Our lab is doing X, and it's so bloody obscure and masochistic that nobody else has bothered. Although what we're doing seems a bit pointless, We hope it will prove useful for something eventually." Saying the latter is honest, but won't get your grants renewed. The really frustrating thing is when your lab is doing something that another lab is doing better because you're trying to get into what looks like a really interesting and useful area. Then you have to justify why you're the worst in the world at Y but still deserve funding vs a lab that's #1 in the world at X.