The Exchange, September 2004

Issue 11(3), September 2004

In this issue

Creating a role for yourself in developing research proposals Part I. What technical communicators can offer

By Laurel K. Grove (l.grove@ieee.org)

Introduction

Researchers hate proposals. They would rather be doing science than writing. They write proposals because they must, but the ideal sponsor (the agency offering to fund research) would pay for all of their work based on only a first rough proposal written by someone else. It would be even better if the sponsor wouldn’t ask for periodic reports. But that’s fantasy—or perhaps science fiction. On the other hand, as technical communicators, we have skills that can help our researcher colleagues, both by relieving the pain of writing and by improving the chances of success.

In writing this article, I have assumed that you are involved in “Big Science”, or science funded by U.S. government agencies at large institutions; however, the same suggestions apply to other research environments. One basis for my assumption is the reported fact that such science accounts for most of the science currently being done. Both the national laboratory system and universities depend on being part of Big Science. At some of these large organizations, proposal departments handle every proposal. More often, although the proposal departments try to handle all of the proposals, any number of small proposals sneak by, below their radar. As a technical communicator in frequent, direct contact with the researchers, chances are good that you can be involved in these proposals as well as in the large, multidisciplinary ones that are necessarily led by the proposal department.

Skills you can offer

Detachment

One of our most useful assets in the proposal process is detachment ("distance"). In preparing a proposal, researchers tend, not surprisingly, to focus on the research. They give their full attention to identifying the investigation they want to do, thinking about the alternatives, determining what effort each might take, and so on. That’s important, but most proposals require much more material that the researcher often ignores (at the risk of losing the award).

The problem is that when researchers read the request for proposal (RFP), which spells out the application procedure in sometimes excruciating detail, they are primarily interested in learning what scientific problem is to be addressed and secondarily in finding out the technical concerns of the sponsor. Sometimes that (and the total amount of money available) will be as much as they read before starting to develop their ideas for how to address the problem. They note the proposal due date and keep it in mind as the time when they must have made all their decisions about methods and materials. Well, they do realize that getting it written down means they’ve got to complete their decisions a day or two earlier, but they use the rest of the lead time for imagining what they could do with the budget available.

As a detached participant reading the RFP, you can be less distracted by the possibilities of the science and more attentive to the other requirements described in the RFP. These requirements range from how the proposal is to be presented (sometimes RFPs specify font size and word processing software as well as organization and content) to required management and accounting specifications. Attention to such requirements can be what raises your group’s proposal above those of the competition. Indeed, ignoring such details can result in a sponsor’s dismissing a proposal without ever considering its scientific merits.

Familiarity with genres

As a technical communicator, you work with a number of researchers and research projects. That diversity of experience has made you more familiar with the range of research genres than any single researcher, and that is an asset you can bring to the proposal process. Researchers hope to prepare only one or two proposals per year, and preferably even fewer. You, in contrast, might work on the proposals created by each researcher in your organization, possibly as many as a dozen per year, even if you haven’t taken on proposal work as a specialty. In doing that one proposal per year, the researcher is likely to try to avoid bureaucratic nuisances and may lose track of the ins and outs of meeting sponsor and employer requirements. You will have seen proposals often enough to know which requirements matter most and how they can best be accommodated.

Writing to the audience

The third thing you can offer as a technical communicator is the advantage of knowing how to write to an audience. “Know your audience” is probably the most common advice we get as technical communicators, and like any other technical communication document, proposals are written for a specific audience. One program I worked with had a very proactive champion at its sponsoring agency. When I asked about the audience for the program’s proposal, the answer was definitely “Frank”. But having such a clearly identified audience is rare, and even Frank had to be able to use the proposals to persuade others above him in the decision-making chain. Most proposals go to a review committee, and you may not know who is on that committee. Standard guidance given to proposal writers is that you should get to know and cultivate the decision-makers, but in the interest of ensuring fairness to all bidders, many sponsors try to make that impossible. On the other hand, the sponsor writes an RFP, and that document is a terrific source of clues as to how the decision will be made. I'll discuss those clues in more detail in Part II of this article, which will appear in the next issue of this newsletter.

Specific services you can offer

Review the RFP

When they come out of graduate school, researchers have grown accustomed to being left to their own devices to write proposals. This means that they expect to have full control of the creation process, and for them the creative part is the research plan. Therefore, that is the part on which they focus. The result may be that they neglect the other requirements specified in the RFP. I don’t recall ever seeing an RFP that didn’t include some requirements beyond the technical, and those requirements are often extensive. Thus, one of the services you can provide is to identify all of the requirements specified in the RFP, including those for the form and content of the response, the business requirements, and the full range of technical requirements. The same review gives you the opportunity to identify the real audience of the proposal and their specific concerns.

Outline the response based on the RFP requirements

RFPs invite specific kinds of response within a specific time frame. If you establish an outline or framework that fits the specific form and organization required by the sponsor, you free your researcher colleagues to focus on the scientific or technical requirements. This makes it easier to provide a complete response that meets the sponsor’s needs and deadlines.

Provide institutional boilerplate

Boilerplate is anything that can be reused for multiple proposals. One of the important ways that you can contribute to proposals is by supplying accurate, well-written boilerplate. Descriptions of institutional capabilities are a good example of material that can be treated as boilerplate. Those capabilities change over time, which means that the version a researcher used in applying for a grant a year or two ago is probably outdated and wrong; one written or revised for last week’s or last month’s proposal is more likely to be accurate. By having these descriptions readily available, you can start populating the proposal outline early in the process. When working as proposal manager for a consulting company, I not only prepared the outline for the proposal, I also filled in all parts that were not of interest to technical staff, and thus ensured that I had obtained much of the needed material before the last minute. This practice freed the researchers to concentrate on the parts they're best able to work on: the research description.

There are dangers to using boilerplate. Sponsoring agencies prefer responses tailored to their needs, which are unlikely to be exactly the same as those of other agencies. Thus, offering a too-generic response is a risk. You also risk inserting unnecessary details, such as excess security, technical limits, or specific management reports, carried over from some previous sponsor. Provide boilerplate, but edit it carefully to ensure that it is suitable for the current proposal.

Track institutional requirements

If you’re working in a large organization such as a university or national laboratory, there will be institutional requirements in addition to those of the sponsor. Almost any organization requires that researchers obtain managerial approval before making any proposal that commits the organization to conducting a project. Some organizations also require scientific peer reviews; the researchers understand and accept these because they're familiar with the process from journal publishing. Other organizations have a rainbow of managerial reviews (the red team, the pink team, the gold...). These are intended to make sure that any issue that could put the organization at risk has been addressed. Depending on the subject matter, there could also be reviews by additional internal groups, such as a Human Subjects Committee or Legal Affairs. By virtue of your familiarity with many researchers and their proposals, you have an opportunity to learn the institutional requirements better than the researcher, as well as exactly which managers and administrators must sign off on a proposal.

Schedule the development and delivery

Having noted the proposal due date in the RFP, the researcher expects to have the entire time until that date to plan the project. Even if they were asked only to put into writing something they have talked about for years, they would now find it necessary to consider every alternative, including their best choices if money were no concern. As technical communicators, and with our more detached view, we are aware of the many review and production steps before a proposal can be delivered on the sponsor’s due date. Knowing the institutional requirements, which managers and administrators must sign off on proposals, and what lead time each requires, you can set up a realistic schedule that accommodates them. If the sponsor’s turnaround time is really too short to allow the standard review (something that is much less common than procrastinating researchers would have you believe), your past work with these administrators may have given you chips you can cash in should a real emergency occur. If they know you well, you might be given the dangerous honor of reviewing the proposal or even signing it for them.

At any rate, knowing the internal review and approval requirements, as well as being aware of the time needed just for the logistics of producing and shipping or hand-delivering copies of the proposal, the technical communicator can count back to create a schedule that ensures on-time delivery of the proposal and that consolidates and limits the amount of time and attention demanded from the researcher. In addition, communicating the schedule to the researcher ensures that there are no surprise deadlines, which often result in hasty, poorly written proposals.

Review the proposal

You’re probably expecting me to talk about editing proposals. I’d like to, but chances are you’ll never get the opportunity. It doesn’t seem to matter whether there is a week or a year in lead time—the proposal will still be written at the end of that time. Sometimes that happens because the sponsor changes the available information, and sometimes responders wait in hopes that the sponsor will change it. I have occasionally wished that I were the only one in the research organization to see the whole RFP. Then I could give the researchers a due date that is early enough to let me shepherd the proposal through the entire institutional review, and maybe even make a real editing pass with time to read all of the words, not just the headings. However, since the researchers are usually the ones who obtain the RFPs from the sponsors, the opportunity to hasten them with an early internal due date is rare.
Even though it’s unlikely that you will get to edit proposals in your usual meticulous way, your substantive review during the preparation can add a lot of value to the final proposal. Most importantly, you can compare the final draft to the requirements specified in the RFP and make sure that no issue of concern to the sponsor has been neglected. In part II of this article, I'll cover what to look for.

Laurel K. Grove is a Senior Member of STC's Willamette Valley Chapter (Portland, Oregon). She first worked with research proposals as an archeologist, both writing proposals to seek research funding and writing RFPs and reviewing proposals to fund archeological projects. A career change later, as an editor in the environmental sciences (at Battelle Northwest, Battelle Pantex, and Oregon State University’s College of Forestry), Laurel realized that the quality of research depends on the quality of the proposal and began to work on every proposal she could. She also served on STC’s Research Grants Committee (1997–2002; chair 2001–2002), reviewing numerous proposals in our field. After a stint with a high-tech company for which she was developing an average of two new proposals every week, Laurel is taking a hiatus and working with slower-paced non-profit groups near her home in Salem, Oregon.

Editorial: Through a glass, darkly

by Geoff Hart (ghart@videotron.ca)

In Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, the early scientist and philosopher of science observed that we poor mortals find it far more difficult than most of us would believe to be objective in our assessments of what we observe:

"For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced."—Sir Francis Bacon

Bacon identified several types of unclear thought process (cognitive biases) that interfere with our attempts at objectivity. In this editorial, I'll focus on three of them:

Individual peculiarities

These peculiarities represent the biases or idiosyncratic ways of thinking that make each of us interpret the evidence of our senses somewhat differently. These biases may be extremely subtle and difficult to communicate; for example, even though the wavelength of a particular color of light may be objectively measurable and quantifiable, each of us experiences that color somewhat differently. (Your mauve is my purple and someone else's blue.) The biases may also be as overt as the preference for a purely scientific explanation of everything versus the preference for a supernatural explanation. Reading Michael Shermer's columns in Scientific American always makes me uncomfortable because of how singlemindedly he ignores anything that is not quantifiable. I don't often disagree with Shermer's conclusions; it's his rhetorical style that annoys me.

Limitations imposed by language

Our minds are immensely powerful tools for manipulating symbols, but are astonishingly weak at grappling with concepts for which we lack symbols. The importance of this phenomenon is easy enough to see in most interpersonal relationships: it can take enormous effort to move past a feeling of discomfort to attain an understanding of why we're uncomfortable with the other person, often because we lack the words to describe that discomfort. On the other hand, the symbols we do have can prejudice how we think of things. By writing so compellingly about the metaphor of "the selfish gene", Richard Dawkins simultaneously gave us a powerful tool for thinking about natural selection and an anthropomorphic metaphor ("selfishness") that can be quite misleading. For example, Dawkins ignores the fact that as thinking beings, we are capable of changing our behavior to a startling degree despite the selfish urgings of our genes.

Pre-existing and "inherited" beliefs

Those things that we already believe can powerfully shape what new things we're prepared to believe. This is a particular problem in the sciences, because so much of our work builds on pre-existing belief structures. As John S. Mattick, an Australian molecular biologist, observes so trenchantly in the October 2004 issue of Scientific American:

"Assumptions can be dangerous, especially in science. They usually start as the most plausible or comfortable interpretation of the available facts. But when their truth cannot be immediately tested and their flaws are not obvious, assumptions often graduate to articles of faith, and new observations are forced to fit them. Eventually, if the volume of troublesome information becomes unsustainable, the orthodoxy must collapse."

Once a scientific "fact" becomes established, it becomes very difficult indeed to challenge that fact. For decades after the discovery that genes occupied relatively clearly defined positions on chromosomes, this fact strongly affected how geneticists thought about genes—so much so that when Barbara McClintock discovered that some genes in corn seemed to be moving around, nobody believed her. On the contrary, the mere notion of "jumping genes" (now called transposons) was widely ignored for nearly 20 years—until the evidence could no longer be ignored, and earned her a Nobel Prize in 1983. As Galileo Galilei noted, "In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."

As Mattick points out in his article, a similar phenomenon may be occuring today in the wake of the completion of the Human Genome Project. For nearly half a century, the "central dogma" of genetics has stated that genes and their transcription into proteins are solely responsible for the development and behavior of organisms. The emerging sciences of proteomics and of RNA metabolism in cells now pose a strong challenge to this assumption: the situation is clearly far more complex than is acknowledged by the central dogma. Overturning that dogma—and replacing it with a new one—may still take decades, but the past history of science strongly suggests that it will be overturned, just as Newton's mechanics were replaced by Einstein's relativity and quantum mechanics. It's not that the central dogma of genetics or Newton's mechanics were wrong: they were simply imprecise or incomplete descriptions of a more complex reality.

Making your biases heard

There are obviously many other biases, such as a willful blindness to anything that challenges our self-image, that forces us to rigorously examine our thoughts, or that is likely to disrupt our comfort. Moreover, there are many unconscious biases we don't even know exist until someone points them out. (I can see all the married readers in the audience nodding their heads sagely.) In the minds of government officials, these biases have a much more serious consequence than the biases that lead to me subjecting you to yet another of my editorials: they can shape the fate of whole nations, and if the greenhouse warming theorists are correct (as I believe they are after editing several recent journal manuscripts on this topic), perhaps even life on Earth as a whole.

This issue becomes uniquely significant to us every 4 years or so, when national elections come around—as is presently the case in the United States. It's a truism that any national government attains its power by juggling the affections of a range of special-interest groups, and maintains power by not challenging the assumptions of their supporters. For a recent example of how politics can influence the process of science, with potentially disastrous consequences, I encourage you to read the 2004 position paper published by the Union of Concerned Scientists (listed in the bibiography of this article). Let me make my bias clear right now: I have a lot of sympathy for this paper, and have seen several damning assessments of the government's weak response. Unfortunately, though I'm no fan of the current administration, President Bush and his cronies hardly invented this kind of meddling in things they don't really understand.

Promoting that particular bias is not my goal here; this is a newsletter about communication, not politics. But I do want to emphasize the importance of our skills as scientific communicators in the context of politics. Whether you're Republican, Democrat, politically inert, or (like me) someone who doesn't even live in the United States, I urge you to have a look at the report and decide for yourself whether you should be disturbed by what you read. If you are, write to your elected representatives—and to the people who may replace them in the next government—and use all the communication skills at your disposal to complain. (Of course, if you agree with a policy, write to tell these people that you support it. This sends a clear message that science is important to our lives in the modern world.)

As scientific communicators, we have the ability to help shape the debate over how science in our respective countries is conducted by intelligently communicating the facts as we see them, always acknowledging the power of our own acknowledged and unperceived biases. I encourage you to do so.

Bibliography

Bacon, F. 1620. The new organon or true directions concerning the interpretation of nature.

Mattick, J.S. 2004. The hidden genetic program of complex organisms. Scientific American October: 60-67.

Miller, K.R. 1997. The thing about facts (Barbara McClintock and the jumping genes).

Shermer, M. 2004. The enchanted glass. Scientific American May: 46.

Union of Concerned Scientists. 2004. Restoring scientific integrity.

Book review: The Craft of Scientific Presentations

by David Armbruster (darmbruster@utmem.edu)

Reprinted from Technical Communication with the kind permission of the editor and the author.

Alley, M. 2003. The craft of scientific presentations: critical steps to succeed and critical errors to avoid. Springer-Verlag, New York, N.Y. 264 p. [ISBN 0-387-95555-0. $29.95 USD (softcover).]

One of the missing links in the chain of events leading to the explosion shortly after takeoff of the Challenger spacecraft was an effective oral presentation, according to Michael Alley, author of The Craft of Scientific Presentations. A teleconference between Morton Thiokol engineers and NASA administrators the night before failed, in part, because the engineers didn’t target the audience, didn’t understand the biases of the audience, and didn’t create visuals that were clear and succinct in their message.

Effective oral presentations by scientists are increasingly important in communicating highly complex hypotheses, methodologies, and results to managers and legislators who generally have no in-depth training in the sciences but who are making critical decisions about appropriations and determining industry and national priorities. In addition, reports by science writers can be misleading when they hear poorly organized presentations or see poorly presented visuals by scientists at conferences.

In his book, Alley “attempts to offer advice that emphasizes the advantages, while mitigating the disadvantages” of giving effective presentations (p. 8). He seeks to analyze presentations from four perspectives: speech, structure, visual aids, and delivery, which are the titles of the four main substantive chapters. I believe he has succeeded admirably.

Alley not only communicates an excellent understanding of the essentials of effective scientific oral presentations, he also provides clear examples of what works, what doesn’t, and why. For example, “For all slides except the title slide, use a sentence headline to state the slide’s purpose” (p. 125). The sentence headline, among other things, helps to quickly orient the audience and, perhaps more importantly, forces the presenter to consider the purpose of each slide and its intrinsic value.

Among the 10 critical errors (and solutions) he discusses throughout the book are giving the wrong speech (solution: emphasize audience, purpose, and occasion), leaving the audience at the dock (solution: anticipate the audience’s questions and biases), projecting slides that no one reads (solution: understand the importance of typography, color, and layout), and not paying attention (solution: consider the room, time, audience, and self).

Different kinds of scientific presentations—technical conference presentation, after-dinner speech, class lecture, and informational and inspirational presentations—require different approaches to preparation, production, and delivery. For example, models and objects passed among the audience are more appropriate for a classroom lecture than a conference presentation; an inspirational presentation is more appropriate as a keynote address, an after-dinner speech, or a talk to new graduate students. In addition to the standard presentation formats, Alley, in the second appendix, addresses poster presentations from both the oral and visual perspectives.

An issue that most scientists consider when preparing presentations is, What part, if any, should style play in the presentation? Most scientists want to appear to be as objective as possible, eschewing anything that smacks of personality or enthusiasm, much less passion. Alley asks, then, If scientists are not enthusiastic about their subject, how can they expect anyone else to be interested? His response: “Content without style goes unnoticed, and style without content has no meaning” (p. 11).

Alley uses many examples of good and bad presentations and then follows up with specific advice on avoiding the problems and augmenting the positive aspects. Although several tables and figures help summarize key points, a list of do’s and don’ts at the end of each chapter would strengthen the book’s organization. The author does include an excellent checklist (Appendix A) that can be used by both presenters and others to critique presentations constructively.

Those for whom The Craft of Scientific Presentations is primarily intended—scientists and engineers—may not take advantage of this easily read, conversational, substantive work unless, of course, they are encouraged by those who assist scientists and engineers in communicating the results of their research to read the book and carefully consider its recommendations. If you (or others you know) are interested in improving scientific presentations, Alley’s book—substantive, well-written, substantiated guidelines for preparing and delivering effective scientific presentations—is required reading before the next scientific presentation.

Finally, the title of the book (The Craft of Scientific Presentations) provides one of the best clues to the book’s message: the ability to give good presentations is not a genetically linked trait but a craft that can be learned.

In addition to the text, there are two appendices, a name index, and a subject index created by an animated indexer!

David L. Armbruster is a Fellow and past president of STC, and is currently a professor and head of scientific publications at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. His teaching includes scientific presentation skills, scientific writing workshops, and ethical issues in scientific communication. He currently serves as the Mid-South Chapter historian.

The hazards of scientific research

(Author unknown)

A research team proceeded towards the apex of a natural geologic protuberance, the purpose of their expedition being the procurement of a sample of liquid hydride of oxygen in a large vessel, the exact size of which was unspecified. One member of the team precipitously descended, sustaining severe damage to the upper cranial structure; subsequently the second member of the team performed a self-rotational translation oriented in the same direction taken by the first team member. It will be a while before Jack and Jill head up that hill for a pail of water again.

Science communicators' conference in New Zealand

By Janette Busch (Buschj@lincoln.ac.nz)

Science Communication – a challenge for the 21st century was the title of the Science Communicators’ conference held at the Heritage Hotel, Auckland, on 23 June. The conference was organised by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology (a government science funding organization) and the Royal Society of New Zealand. More than 150 people attended, representing a large number of different organisations—ranging from Crown Research Institutes and tertiary institutions through privately owned companies. The day’s highlight was the establishment of an organisation to represent science communicators in New Zealand—SCANZ, the Science Communicators Association of New Zealand. This was the realisation of a long-held dream.

Dr. Jim Watson, President of the Royal Society of New Zealand and Chief Executive of Genesis Research and Development, opened the conference. Ms. Bernie Hobbs, an Australian science communicator with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, then gave an entertaining speed tour through the history and practice of science communication in Australia. Three blocks of concurrent workshops were held, covering topics of interest to both new and experienced science communicators. There was also a presentation by media representatives on the changing face of news, and a panel discussion on the benefits for New Zealand of developing international science communication linkages.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stay for the conference dinner, which featured a presentation on the Chocolate Lover’s Guide to Science Communication!

Parting thoughts

"Popular misunderstanding of science and its history centers upon the vexatious notion of scientific progress—a concept embraced by all practitioners and boosters, but assailed, or at least mistrusted, by those suspicious of science and its power to improve our lives. The enemy of resolution, here as nearly always, is that old devil Dichotomy. We take a subtle and interesting issue, with a real resolution embracing aspects of all basic positions, and we divide ourselves into two holy armies, each with a brightly colored cardboard mythology as a flag of struggle. The cardboard banner of scientific boosterism is an extreme form of realism, the notion that science progresses because it discovers more and more about an objective material reality out there in the universe.

"The extreme version holds that science is an utterly objective enterprise (and therefore superior to other human activities); that scientists read reality directly by invoking the scientific method to free their minds of cultural superstition; and that the history of science is a march towards Truth, mediated by increasing knowledge of the external world.

"The cardboard banner of the opposition is an equally extreme form of relativism, the idea that truth has no objective meaning and can only be assessed by the variable standards of different communities and cultures. The extreme version holds that scientific consensus is not different from any other arbitrary set of social conventions, say the rules for Chinese handball set by my old crowd... Science is ideology, and scientific 'progress' is no improving map of external reality, but only a derivative expression of cultural change...

"These extreme positions, of course, are embraced by the opposition to enhance the rhetorical advantages of dichotomy. They are not really held by anyone, but partisans think that their opponents are this foolish, thus fanning the zealousness of their own advocacy. The possibility for consensus drowns in a sea of charges."—Stephen Jay Gould, Shields of expectation—and actuality

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"The debate of realists and relativists, when expressed as ends of a dichotomy vying for victory, is silly and tendentious. Science progresses by establishing facts about the world out there—and science is, and must be, socially embedded."—Stephen Jay Gould, Shields of expectation--and actuality

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"The central claim of each side is correct, and no inconsistency attends the marriage once we drop the peripheral extremities of each attitude. Science is, and must be, culturally embedded; what else could the product of human passion be? Science is also progressive because it discovers and masters more and more (yet ever so little in toto) of a complex external reality. Culture is not the enemy of objectivity but a matrix that can either aid or retard advancing knowledge. Science is not a linear march to truth but a tortuous road with blind alleys and a rubbernecking delay every mile or two. Our road map is not objective reality but the patterns of human thoughts and theories."—Stephen Jay Gould, Shields of expectation--and actuality

Contact and copyright information

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