Conventional wisdom says that the way to win more awards is to get researchers writing more proposals. Yet many incentives designed to stimulate proposal development can be hard on the bottom line, especially those that pay researchers for their time or to attend grant-writing workshops presented by outside consulting firms. This paper presents…

After months of waiting, the grant reviews came back: "excellent," "excellent," and "fair." What?! How can this be? Why is the third review so out of line with the first two? On more than one occasion a principal investigator (PI) has been frustrated not only by a negative funding decision but more so by the accompanying reviewer evaluation forms…