Thread by @DrAnneCarpenter

Impact score 10! 😮🎉

I only applied for this major grant because an NIH Program Officer went out of his way to encourage me.

How many don't flourish in their careers because someone isn't looking out for them? How can YOU take this role for someone, esp. those less privileged?

I had to stare at it, and have my colleague look at ERA commons, just to be sure it really meant what I thought. Both of us, seasoned scientists, started questioning the scoring system and had to doublecheck 😄.

It's amazing what getting a grant means. Excitement about the science that will be done, enthusiasm for the lab members it will employ, excitement about the impact on the world it will have, ... and a break from writing a zillion proposals over the next few years.

Advocating for someone means: connecting them to opportunities that fit, encouraging them to pursue it, and most importantly guiding them on the unwritten rules. It pains me that some demographics have less access to this kind of advocacy/mentoring - and this has a real impact.

So go out of your way to advocate for, and help others in their careers!

Be like Mike, @mnitabach , who provided guidance to this random stranger on the internet and volunteered to review a summary statement for me years ago. I'll never forget that kindness 😊

Side note: just 1 week ago, my NSF proposal was rejected (with almost lowest score possible) because it "lacked strong preliminary evidence for utility of deep learning" and concerns "about the extent to which the applicants have prior experience in DL for cell classification."

How is that for evidence of stochasticity in scoring?! The major difference in the proposals was cell classification vs cell segmentation but that isn't sufficient to explain the disparity in scores.