Resubmitting Unscored Grant Proposals Posted on January 14, 2008 F. Xavier Castellanos (bio) describes the path between unscored and fundable grant proposals.

Getting unscored is, these days, a badge of honor, and it really just means there was clear agreement by at least two of the reviewers that there was something here that just wasn't going to make it and it wasn't worth the time. But the reviews are still going to tell you: What were the issues? And there are some reviews that basically say, "This is not going to happen, and you've got to come back in a different way," but most of the time that's not the case. Most of the time the reviews say, "This is a good idea, and all of these issues needed to be addressed, but this one is a non-starter. And until that's settled, it's not even worth talking about because we're really talking about grants that are seen as flawless getting funded, so we're not going to spend the time on this."

So there are absolutely cases, every single time, of grants that go from unscored to fundable. The usual thing, though, is unscored to scored to fundable, and even then half of them don't get a fundable score on the third shot. But the core idea can still be improved, and the bottom line is you can't put the same name in, but if you improve the issue and you come back with better science, you can keep doing it. Persistence pays.

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