NeuroDojo

Back to the beach

I'll be spending the next couple of days out at South Padre Island at the University's Coastal Studies Lab. I'll be testing some rough and ready experiments so that, if the Whitehall Foundation lets me apply for a grant, I'll have some preliminary data to include in it.

But, you might ask, "Isn't the entire point of writing grants so that you can get money to do experiments? Why are you having to do experiments before you send in the application for grants?"

The reason for needing to do experiments in advance is that funding agencies want a pretty good indication that the research they fund will be successful. Given competition for funding is very tight these days, it's a funder's market, so a funding agency can set very high demands for their applications. So... you have to show some indication that you can do the work, and the best way to do that is to include some real examples.

The complaint that "You have to have the work done before you can get funding for it!" is a common one among researchers, but I've seen very few practical solutions for it.