"David Lloyd-Jones" wrote in message
...
Mark Thorson wrote:
Steve Harris wrote:
I can't tell you how many times I've had a grant
proposal
criticized on the grounds that it wasn't being submitted
by
a recognized expert in the field in which the work was
proposed. That's fine, but this actually happened once
in a
field my lab had invented, and in which there WERE no
experts working on the technique but me and a couple of
my
team members!

This would be your work in proactive treatments for
chronic, whole-body frostbite?


Nah, my work in rapid mild hypothermia induction in mammals
by repeated fluorocarbon lung lavage. Three years ago they
said it was pretty extreme, since not likely clinically
relevant. If you caught the front page of the NY Times
yesterday, you'll see that the clinical relevance of cooling
people down rapidly after resuscitation has now pretty well
penetrated, even to the popular media. This was all obvious
to us 3 years ago from 20 years of animal experiments done
by a dozen labs, but the reviewers had to read it in the
NEJM 16 mo ago. Morons. As noted, we gave all the
references; the reviewers were either too lazy to read them,
or too stupid to see their implications, or both.

We were NOT asking for money to do human research, just more
animal research as proof of concept (stuff since done by
others who DID get the grant money, in academia). Mostly at
the time it was research we'd already done g, but not all
of it. Try doing that and having a reviewer tell you that
work you already did won't work. It makes you want to commit
murder, since you really can't reply in any way which should
cause the kind of pubic embarrassment and career damage to
the anonymous reviewer that such remarks SHOULD occasion.

If a reviewer has the unmitigated egotistical gall to say
your experiment won't work, when you know it will because
you did it, and you know the reviewer can't be basing his
opinion on any of his own work or expertise because he
doesn't DO that kind of work, because it was invented by you
and *nobody* else is doing it, THEN you have the right to be
pretty damned angry. But who are you going to complain to?
The NIH is only going to yawn and tell you to take a number
and stand in line.

SBH