Thread by @DrSherryPagoto

It’s grant season again! Isn’t THIS scenario the WORST:

You submitted a grant, it got a score. You respond to the reviews only for the resubmission score to stay the same or get worse. AGH!! What happened? Here are some common reasons. A thread! 1/14

The No Cigar: The changes you made did not adequately solve the problems that reviewers were concerned about. 2/14

The One Step Forward, One Step Back: A change you made solved one problem but then introduced a new problem. 3/14

The Debate Debacle: You debated the reviewers concerns and consequently made minimal changes. You lost the debate. 4/14

The "He/she Is Just Not That Into You": The reviewers didn’t feel the project had enough significance in the first place. Fixing a few methodological flaws didn’t change that feeling. 5/14

The "You Just Can't Leave Well Enough Alone": You added a completely new element to the project (unrelated to the reviews) that opened a can of worms. 6/14

The Eagle Eye: You got a new reviewer who caught serious problems the first reviewers missed. While this might seem unfair, from a scientific perspective, is it ethical for a scientist to ignore a methodological flaw simply because another scientist overlooked it? 7/14

The "Sorry, This Cancer Can’t Be Treated": You got a new reviewer who rated certain flaws as more lethal than the first set of reviewers did. 8/14

The bottom line is that your grant was reviewed twice, possibly by the same, possibly by different reviewers, and it did not produce the level of enthusiasm needed to get a fundable score. (CRAP!) 11/14

If you had new reviewers this is even worse news, because not one but two sets of your peers weren’t wowed. (DAMN YOU ALL!) 10/14

Lessons learned (from someone who has been on receiving end of all of these highly pleasant scenarios): be very careful in making the decision to put the time into a resubmission. Just because it got scored doesn’t mean it has a chance. Things to consider… 11/14

How close was the score? Specifically, what were the scores for Significance? This is a HARD one to move. If the overall score isn’t in spitting distance look for enthusiasm expressed in the reviewers comments, such as… 12/14

“Flaws are minimal and easily fixable,” “the work is highly significant,” “work is likely to have high impact.” Is there language that makes you feel invited back? If not, you probably weren’t. 13/14

Finally, consider how fixable the problems are AND whether fixes will introduce more problems, possibly requiring more data--which may mean the whole thing just isn't ready for prime time.

I'm very curious how others have made the tough decision to resubmit or move on! 14/14