3 ms·
> And where does the actual language come from? Millar is already at work on his next project to answer that question, too. In some preliminary data analysis of
by Gatsky 4y ago
> And where does the actual language come from? Millar is already at work on his next project to answer that question, too. In some preliminary data analysis of all previous NIH calls for grant applications, he found that all of the hype adjectives identified in this month’s study also appear in information from the NIH telling people how to apply for grants. It may be the case that the rise in hype words in applications has happened, in part, because regulators planted the seeds.
(Emphasis mine)
This is the essential point, buried in the article. Granting agencies cause a lot of this nonsense. The grant assessment criteria they provide will literally say things like: “demonstrate the work is novel and transformational.”
- aaplok 4y agoThis. And then applicants who tell the reviewers explicitly the information they need using phrases like "this application is innovative because..." tend to be more successful than those who let the reviewer guess. As is clear in this thread people want bang for their buck. So applications are asked to justify what bang they will provide, and the successful ones tell it.
- mattkrause 4y agoAmen. Literally the first sentence of the NIH criteria page: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/critiques/rpg.htm https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/critiques/rpg.htm "R01, R03, R21, R34. Reviewers will provide an overall impact score to reflect their assessment of the likelihood for the project to exert a sustained, powerful influence on the research field(s) involved..."(Emphasis mine). There are whole sections called "Innovation" and "Significance."
- PeterisP 4y agoYeah, as soon as grant agencies add scoring criteria like "+1 point: does this application support sustainable development?", for a weird reason every grant from theoretical math to astronomy will have some paragraph with "sustainable" as the main keyword.