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 A New Way to Win Your Next Grant

1.      An essay on Dr. George Gopen's unique and powerful scholarship for clearly written and clearly understood communication, by Dr. Barbara Croft Porter, FSNMMI, FACNM, Past President of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging.  
2.      Dr. George Gopen's Opening Gambit in his 16-hour presentation of this new method 
3.      A recent testimonial from a graduate student at Cambridge University in England
4.      Dr. Croft Porter’s essay on how the NIH study sections work
 

1.      Dr. George Gopen's unique and powerful scholarship for clearly written and clearly understood communication
 
by Dr. Barbara Croft Porter, FSNMMI, FACNM
 Past President of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging 
Scientific researchers cannot do their work if they cannot achieve consistent success in two crucial activities – securing grant funding and publishing their results in professional journals.  Both of these activities depend – to a far greater extent than most people realize – on the quality of the researcher’s writing.  Therefore, nothing can be more important to scientific researchers than finding a way to increase the quality of their competitive writing.  Nothing.
 
Successful written communication is not a matter of right or wrong: Successful written communication is a matter of what works.  “What works” is what Dr. Gopen teaches.  To our knowledge no one else really understands how to define or explain “what works.”
 
Through more than 45 years, George Gopen has been discovering and developing a way to teach writers of English how to make sure that their reader understands what the writer intended.  His discoveries have produced The Reader Expectation Approach To The English Language (REA). 
 
For scientists – and we dare to say for a majority of scientists -- poorly written, uncommunicative writing is their Achilles’ heel.  Before you take umbrage at this negative opinion, let us explain what we mean by “poorly written.”  We are not referring to grammatical errors, nor excessive length, nor improper word choice.  Instead, we define poor writing as writing that fails to communicate the writer’s thoughts to the reader’s mind.  This happens far more often than most people realize.

When a reader successfully travels from the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence all the way to its period, the reader wants to believe the sentence has adequately expressed the writer’s thoughts. But just because the sentence made some sense does not necessarily mean that the reader has perceived the sense the writer intended.  If the sentence failed to deliver its intended meaning, quickly and clearly, the sentence was “poorly written.”
 
How can a writer greatly increase the odds that any given sentence will mean for readers what it was intended to mean?  In Dr. Gopen’s REA, he explains, in a completely new and revolutionary fashion, how readers go about the activities of reading and interpreting.  They take their interpretive clues not so much from word choice and word meaning but rather from where in the structure of the sentence a words appears.   By learning to have the right words show up in the right places, writers not only are empowered over their own writing process and over the reader’s reading process, but are led back into their thinking process.  Writing better will make you think better.  Understanding REA furnishes writers with techniques that highly increase the likelihood that readers will get the intended meaning of any given sentence.
 
In a scientific marketplace where less than 20% are likely to be funded in any given funding period, no one can afford their writing not to be superior.  If your ideas penetrate clearly and easily to the minds of those reviewing the research, your application will clearly stand out from the sea of poorly written applications with which it is in competition.  Greatly improved writing turns into greater funding and publishing success -- the stuff of which successful careers are made.  
 
It is accurate to call Dr. Gopen’s work revolutionary: and yet to all of his audiences it makes immediate sense.  It is hard to use at first, because it requires that one works against deeply ingrained habits developed over a lifetime of writing.  Those who do make the effort to apply what they have learned report astonishing success: Many people who had never succeeded in getting a single grant proposal funded report that now they are succeeding every time they apply.
 
To get some sense of what REA is all about, visit our website: GeorgeGopen.com. On the main menu, first click on “Writings”; once there, click on “Articles.” There you will find the three important essays Dr. Gopen has published in American Scientist.  Read the oldest (and shortest) one first: “The Science of Scientific Writing.” You will also find 70 more articles, the most relevant of which make up a 42-article series he published for the American Bar Association journal Litigation.  That series is located just after the American Scientist articles. 
 
Learning what he has to teach you can change the quality of your professional life.  Promise.
 
Barbara Y. Croft, Ph.D, FSNMMI, FACNM

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2. Dr. George Gopen's Opening Gambit

I will start by making the bold statement: 97% of all scientific writing is inadequate. Let me say that more plainly: 97% of scientific writing is badly done.

I may perhaps have offended you.  But let me help you to reach out to your own reading experiences to understand better what I mean by such an extreme statement.  Let me ask you 3 questions.

First question: When you come to the end of reading a scientific document of any kind -- a grant proposal, a published essay, an essay drafted for publication -- I ask you, do you ever at that moment feel like slamming your fist on the table and crying out "Darn! It's over!  I was enjoying myself so much!  I wish it had been 2 pages longer!” 

Most of the time when we finish such a document, we tend to sense a feeling of relief that it indeed has ended.

And for my second question, again I ask you, the moment you finish reading an entire scientific document, do you ever indulge in a short, silent moment of pride -- pride that you had summoned enough self-discipline and mental energy to make it all the way through that text?  While we tend never to convey that to any of our colleagues, is it not a private, momentary pleasure all the same?

And thirdly I ask you, the moment you finish reading an entire scientific document, how often do you feel a significant amount of fatigue?  Again, we might not mention that to any of our colleagues, since we're supposed to be mentally tough enough to do battle with these texts and not show any wear and tear; but is that not true for you at the end of reading many a scientific document?  You feel a fatigue that has been engendered by the writing.

Where does this sense of your fatigue come from?  I suggest it comes from the writer -- sentence after sentence -- not giving you a sufficient number of clues to understand how you as reader are supposed to be putting these words together to form thought.  Too often, at the end of reading one sentence, part of your brain is travelling back through it to clear up what it was supposed to mean, while most of your brain is hurtling forward in pursuit of the closure of the oncoming new sentence.  When this happens -- and I submit it happens for as many as 50% of the sentences you read in almost any scientific document -- you have to add to your labor as reader the yet more burdensome labor of becoming its co-author.  Your brain has to entertain this annoying question: “If I had written those words, what would I be trying to convey by them”?  It is hard to be a co-author, especially when the other person is no longer around to clear things up.

If you have to co-author half of all the sentences you read in a scientific document, it is no wonder that when you finish it, you feel a marked sense of fatigue.  From my more than four decades of experience with counseling writers of scientific prose, I can assure you that my estimation of 97% of those documents being inadequate is in no way an exaggeration.  It is a reality with which, by the force of circumstances, we have been forced to live. 

The new news is that it doesn’t have to be that way.  Scientific writing can be made clear and readily available to the reader’s mind – which can happen once the writer becomes consciously aware of how readers actually go about the acts of reading and interpreting.  That is the task with which the Reader Expectation Approach to the English Language has been concerned during the 45 years of its gestation. The full story can now be told, be understood, and be put to use, with astonishing results.
 
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3.  A recent testimonial from a graduate student at Cambridge University

Dear Dr Gopen,
 
I am writing to thank you for your courses and textbooks. In the summer of 2023, I was fortunate enough to come across your work. Thereafter, during my final year at Oxford, applying your advice not only resulted in a drastic improvement in my tutorial essays but also culminated in a first-class degree.
 
For comparison, in the year before I was exposed to the Reader Expectations Approach, only two of my six examination essays received first-class marks. In contrast, having watched your video series and read through both of your textbooks, I received first-class marks in all three of my final year essay exams. As further evidence of your approach’s remarkable insight, my six-thousand-word research project has been both awarded a prize within Oxford and also nominated for a UK-wide competition. 
 
During my first two years at Oxford University, I was hindered by the constant fear that I wrote poorly. Moreover, as you remark during your video series, conventional feedback on written essays is often obscure with respect to how one should extrapolate from a given in-line comment onto a more general improvement. (‘Oh yes! I’ll be certain not to make the same mistake when I write that exact sentence again!’).
 
And whilst your approach does not offer rules per se, the frame of mind regarding expectations has been invaluable. Thanks to your work, I am no longer mosquito-pecked by an ever-present apprehension that my sentences do not ’sound’ right. 
 
In sum, I thank you for your work. Not only have my grades improved, but so, too, has my confidence in writing. If ever you are passing by the University of Oxford, please know that a copy of ‘Expectations’ is held at the library of Harris Manchester College, at the request of one Rick Longley. 
 
All the best,
Andrei ‘Rick’ Longley
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                                                                                                                                      NIH Study Section Meeting
4.  How the Study Section Works
 
I am writing this article to communicate what I learned about how a study section goes about evaluating a grant proposal.  Understanding this might improve an applicant’s chances for funding success. 
 
A Scientific Review Committee or study section is made of members who consider and score applications from the those desiring grant funding.  The applicants do not see the study section or choose its members.  Their only contact is with the applications.  Each study section considers a group of applications connected by the subject matter.  Each member only is required to consider 5 to 7 applications, although all of the applications are available to be read by all the study section members.  The applications are read, commented on, and scored according to a set of criteria.  If the score is in the better half of those presented, the application is discussed by the group.  At the end of the discussion, each member of the group renders a personal score.  The scores and accompanying discussion are forwarded to the funding agency and the program officer assigned to the application. 
 
The point of my discussion here is to help the grant applicants with their relationship to the study section.  After all, the reason for the whole exercise is the achieve the best score and accompanying review so that the applications will have a chance of being funded. 
 
I attended many study section meetings as a program officer.  I received the scores and reports for the applications that had been reviewed.  I held a portfolio of funded grants and applications under review.  I consulted with the applicants before and after the study section meeting.  Attending the meetings and observing the reviews gave me a better sense of the reviewers’ appreciation for how well or poorly the application fared.  One observation that I made along the way was that although the science in a pair of applications could be of equal value, the impression it made on the committee stemmed significantly came from the success of the applicant’s communication ability.
 
Study section members are asked to review the science presented in the application and answer the questions posed in the application announcement.  Therefore, they must understand the science and be able to formulate the answers to the questions.  What can an applicant do to help the reviewer?  First the application must make the science clear.  This can be greatly aided by using the Reader Expectation Approach which will help make the ideas as clear as possible.  It also means considering the questions in the announcement and presenting clear answers to them.  Approaching the application in this way will give the reviewer a clear sense of the importance of the science as well as an approach to writing the review and scoring the application.  (See PA-25-305, Section V for sample Application Review Information.)
 
Why is this approach to grant application so important?  It is because, for any one funding period, about 20% of the applications will be funded.  That means that the hours of work put into 80% of the applications are lost, at least for that funding cycle.  And it means that the scientific research under consideration will not be funded and performed.  From either point of view, it is obvious that you want your application to be in the top 20%.  Time put into making your prose communicate with the reader will pay off again and again.  It will mean success in your career, success for your scientific research, and forward motion.  For your institution, it will mean a rise in its reputation and indirect funding.  It will also mean efficiency in the efforts of all involved in the application and funding process. 
 
I cannot emphasize too much that all of this success starts with the successful communication of your ideas through the Reader Expectation Approach to writing.  Here is finally something new about writing that will give you a competitive advantage over all the others that will be analyzed by the all important study section. 
 
Please contact me for a direct discussion of any of these points or more suggestions for you application.   [email protected]