Member-only story
Winning and losing EU grants
Submitting grants and losing is a pervasive ritual in any academic journey.
As in actual science, most of the incremental gains in all grant submissions come from losses, from learning via more innovative errors and trying again, only better or at least not as badly in the same way as before.
Discovery is the art of failing gracefully — over and over and over again.
Why winning can suck even when it doesn’t
Grant writing is tricky because, ultimately, you’re asking for some money with the promise of producing something interesting.
Anytime any group — be it the public or a private foundation or some weird hybrid — hosts a competition to fund the ‘best’ proposal, the people providing access to the money generally want to believe that the money to which they provided access was well-spent by the selected winners.
This endowment effect means that, if you are awarded money for submitting the ‘best’ proposal, all your follow-up impact assessment reports must spin your work as a ‘success or a great success’ to quote a Hungarian colleague in the European Commission.
Basically, if you are awarded a grant, your funded project, whether it flourishes or fails, must do so spectacularly and with the public’s interest in mind.
