I’m not one to turn down a challenge, so here’s my attempt at a coherent blog post that incorporates my top ten tags.
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rENNISance woman by Cath Ennis
Matt Brown said: "You can blog about whatever you wish, as long as it is related to science and research". His wish is my command! Here are some snippets from my life as a cancer research grant wrangler in Vancouver. Mostly the silly bits.
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The Tag Challenge
- Date:
- Thursday, 29 May 2008 - 19:18 UTC
When trying to obtain research funding for your favourite science projects, you will need to undertake lots of grant writing. It is best to take this endeavour seriously and avoid the kind of silliness that might result in an IgNobel prize sitting in a defunct, unfunded lab.To be successful you will need to convince the funding body of the usefulness and potential benefits of your research. Unfortunately fields such as evolution can suffer from a perceived lack of practical benefits. While topics such as the role of transposable elements in the evolution of the human genome (and the genomes of our closest relatives, if primatology is your thing) are fascinating in their own right, you might have to reserve those subjects for discussion in your weekly journal club and work on something more sensible instead.If you’re in Canada, research that focuses on protecting our collapsing fish stocks is a pretty good bet.UPDATE: there was supposed to be a 100 word limit. D’oh! Here’s the shortened version:
Research funding for any science project requires lots of grant writing. You should take this endeavour seriously, avoiding any silliness that might result in an IgNobel prize and unemployment.
You will need to convince the funding body of the usefulness of your research. Unfortunately, the study of evolution has few practical benefits. The role of transposable elements in the human genome (and in our closest relatives, if primatology is your thing) is fascinating, but you should probably reserve those subjects for journal club and work on something more sensible instead.
If you’re in Canada, fish research is a good bet.
That was actually quite a useful exercise!
Last updated: Thursday, 29 May 2008 - 19:18 UTC
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Comments
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Cath, this is fantastic!
I think I would be really proud to show an IgNobel to my grandchildren one day.
Thanks! Unfortunately my chances of winning the IgNobel are about the same as winning the actual Nobel. Maybe a Darwin Award is more achievable.
I think I am rather far from the IgNobel myself. That runaway alarm clock is hard to beat (won an IgNobel 2 years ago). They now sell it at the MoMa store.
You could always try for a piece of irony cake, which seems to be the standard prise for achievements on Nature Network.
I thought it was Sharpies
…stickers, and pins…