Grant Writing Playlist

Shit's been real serious on this blog as of late, and we think it's time to be a little more ridiculous for a bit. But it's still the tail end of grant-writing season. Like always. So since some of us need motivation (you), and others of us needed reasons for procrastination (us) and it looked like we hadn't actually written anything in a while (whaaaaaaa) we have rewritten two of our favorite grant-writing songs to make them more specific ear-worms for your proposal writing needs. 

You're welcome.

Teach Your Kids About Imposter Syndrome

Confidence can be a particularly hard thing to have in science where so much emphasis is placed on natural brilliance. Failures, no matter how small, are easy to consider a failure of your own intelligence.

 

Frankly... that's bullshit. And this bullshit mentality of "ruh-roh Major Revisions? I AM ALL THE STUPID" is something that strikes women particularly hard, and may be partially to blame for low female and minority involvement in STEM fields. 

Many of the undergraduate students Meaghan interacts with (including ones in her lab) shy away from grant writing, publications and school applications on the basis of not being "Good Enough." Meaghan has overheard more than just a handful of comments along the lines of "that's just so intimidating!" and "but my GPA isn't that high" or "but so-and-so did this and they're so much more accomplished than me." She decided that for the lab meeting she was running this term, the lab would sit down and talk about the perils of interpersonal comparison and low confidence. The lab was pretty interesting, and hopefully at least a little helpful, so we are presenting this lesson plan here for our readers as well as their friends, students, and coworkers. 

Awards for Amos, Not for Amy

A common misconception is that most scientists get paid to do science, where in actuality most scientists get paid to teach, but only get hired or promoted or respected because they do science. In fact, despite the fact that academic scientists are largely paid for their teaching time, that is taken into almost zero consideration when they are being hired... but that is a topic for another blog post. Today we are talking about GAF(C??), those magical beasts that allows researchers to sort of, sometimes, get paid to do their science... or at least get the costs of their science paid for. That's right, Grants, Awards, Fellowships and (Crowdfunding??), the last of which is a new and fancy addition to the triumvirate of other people's money that scientists spend so much time begging for.

Fake it 'til you make it baby.

2013-2014 GAF(C??) application season is almost upon us, which means Meaghan and Amy are getting ready for another round of talking ourselves up and finding ways to make their research sound important to people who don't know anything about it. And in a surprising* twist of fate, Meaghan and Amy have to work harder to get these than their penis-posessing** counterparts. We've talked about some of the disparity in hiring processes before, but now let's delve deep into the sad topic of GAF(C??) discrimination.

Where's the Vengeance Team?

Yes, dear readers, we are still alive despite the pit of Carkoon known as "editing a rap song when you know nothing about rapping." Resting gracefully on the event horizon of total musical despair, we decided to take a break to fill you in a little bit on what's new in the Vengeance Household!

First and foremost, science. Meaghan and Amy recently(ish) went to Berkeley to collect data on oreodonts and omomyids. Meaghan has been doing a lot of preliminary research on character variation in oreodonts and in camelids, so spent most of her time measuring skull after skull after skull, as well as taking pictures to do some geometric morphometric analyses. Amy spent some time measuring itty bitty adorable primate teeth fossils, but mostly was finishing up her thesis so spent most of her time crumpled over her computer cursing at Mesquite, a phylogenetic software program.

We managed to also get some climbing in, heading to Smith Rock, Yosemite, and Indian Rock State Parks for Meaghan's first multi-pitch and some awesome bouldering. Meaghan and Amy shared a tandem rapel, which was made even more special by the lovely song that Amy serenaded Meaghan with the whole way down.

Meaghan is the milk in Amy's cocoa puffs, apparently

Meaghan just won prizes at the 3 Minute Thesis competition and the Graduate Student Research Forum, while Amy passed her Honors College thesis with distinction (ahem, the highest honor) and moved to Denali National Park, where she will be working for the Park Service finding and mapping Cretaceous dinosaur trackways. This summer Meaghan will be working as a field biologist, but will be interspersing that with a trip to the Chicago Field Museum as well as a trip to the American Museum of Natural History, courtesy of the Teddy Roosevelt Grant she's received. So while Vengeance Team North tracks dinosaurs, Vengeance Team South going to molest oreodonts.

View A Summer of Science! in a larger map

 But don't fret, dear readers - the blog will not be abandoned. Not even for fossils. Meaghan is still hard at work on editing the sloth rap into something that is funny and not just horribly, horribly cringe-worthy (RAPPING IS REALLY HARD GUYS!), and Amy is working on a few posts about the sequester suckitude and how she hasn't yet gotten eaten by bears in Alaska. We're also working on figuring out google chat to schedule a few more interviews, compiling all the worst possible scientific concepts you can google with your safe search filter off, and drawing ancient fish carrying basketballs (it will make sense, just trust us).

But in the meantime, here is an excellent youtube video you should all enjoy about a cat experiencing ennui.

And if you liked the Sloth Rap Battle trailer before, imagine how much you'll love the extended version! Hint: you'll love it a lot. Like... a whole hell of a lot.

The Sequester and Science, Part 1

Whether we're creating a mass extinction event of gummy invertebrates in the kitchen, or whining through the most depressing grant-writing parties at the dining room, life at Vengeance Team Headquarters is always a little stressful... and recent federal budget cuts haven't helped. See, in academia science is funded primarily by grants and fellowships, those sweet monetary unicorns that sequestration is making even more rare and competitive, and 20% of those are federal funding sources. As students, Amy and Meaghan apply for a lot of these, which feels like spending hours crafting arrows that you then shoot into the dark. Even the most highly recommended grant applications aren’t always going to get funded at the best of times, and the best of times for funding are going to soon seem like a distant memory. The National Science Foundation expects its overall budget will be cut by five percent and it is likely that new grants will take a major hit—a thousand fewer will be funded this year.

We've already seen the competitive aspect coming out to play, with scientists and the public tearing each other apart over the merits of their research. But worse than the infighting, and worse than poor funding rates for grants, are the insidious impacts of these cuts which hit deep at the core of everything that we (mostly Amy) love. That’s right - the sequester is hurting lemurs.

Within the article, Lemur Center Director Anne Yoder laments about the impacts of budget cuts, “In our case, it would mean the loss of jobs, and consequently, our ability to care for our lemur colony would be compromised.”

Compromised. Lemur safety will be compromised by the sequester. We (mostly Amy) cannot emphasize this enough: the sequester is dangerous for lemurs.

Of course upon hearing this we (mostly Amy) flew into an angry angry rage.       

"This is ridiculous. This country values military funding, patriarchal, capitalistic mind numbing bullshit. Lemurs are gonna die, while our government representatives make more money that some african countries. It may not be evident quite yet how bad this is, but the long term effects of these science budget cuts will be severe. Does this mean no more bananas or tamarinds for lemurs (THEIR FAVORITE TREATS), they’ll have to suffer through generic fruit like the rest of us? Or god forbid, RED DELICIOUS APPLES?"

But don’t worry everyone (Amy). The Vengeance Team is on it. We’ve created a petition (wow, they really don’t check those do they) and have contacted Sarah Mclaughlin to use her heart-wrenching song in a promotional lemur video. We’re sure she’ll get back to us soon, but in the meantime here are some of our favorite lemur videos, which you can feel free to link to when you sign our petition.

In Prosimian Solidarity

Meaghan and Amy (Seriously, mostly Amy)

In Defense of Duck Dicks

The apocalypse isn't here, but the sequester is, and sometimes it feels like they're one and the same. Funding has been cut across the board, and has hit science in all of its beautiful, beaker-filled places. Recently there's been a twitter blow up about one particular scientific project that received funding when so many others did not: Richard Prum's research into duck dicks. For those of you not familiar, we have already briefly discussed the wonderful world of the corkscrew cock; now we feel the urge to defend the research behind it.

So let's talk about boners. Whether you have one, like 'em, or find them somewhat disconcerting, chances are that you see the reasoning behind not wanting to have needles stuck inside one. So with a dearth of human volunteers, the biomechanics of tallywackers have to be studied in cadavers and in animal subjects. Just do a google scholar search on Armadillo penis and you'll find scientific filth for days, filth that was funded not because people really cared too much about the state of erections in armadillos but because of the implications it could have for human beings.

We know you wanted to see one.

Ducks are one of the few birds that have erections, and those erections are craaaaaaazy. Studying them could easily lead to many advances in trouser snake morphological studies. But if that doesn't convince you that we should be funding research into duck boners, let the Vengeance Team toss out just a couple of possible outcomes and research offshoots this science could create.


Male ducks can get erections within seconds, often as they are copulating. Research into distributive shock (shock caused by dilation of the blood vessels and resulting drop in blood pressure) could take dramatic steps forward from figuring out how ducks spontaneously pop a full-on erection.  Distributive shock can kill you, ergo, duck dick research could save your life.

Only 2-4% of rape attempts result in a fertilized egg in females ducks. A lot of this is due to anatomy, as far as the current research dictates, and while lady humans might not sign up for corkscrew vaginas in order to avoid pregnancy (consensual or otherwise), further research could certainly show a hormone that causes abortions in the case of unwanted duck fetuses - potentially a hormone that could have similar effects in human beings. How will we know, unless we look for it?

Duck penises extend to 8-9 inches in the summer, and shrink to less than an inch in the winter. Yeah, we're pretty positive you can see the obvious benefits to figuring that one out. But there are other potential benefits too - what if that mechanism could shrink or expand other pieces of our anatomy... like say our muffin tops or bellies?

Boner science saves life!

These are just a few of the numerous possible offshoots and side-hypotheses research like this can generate. It's happened in the past - at first glance it may have seemed strange and pointless to research a tree, but the Pacific Yew Taxus brevifolia was found contains the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel (taxol) that is used in breast, ovarian, and lung cancer treatment. Have you ever received any sort of injectable medicine? Chances are you have, and you can thank the Atlantic horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus for preventing any bacterial contamination of your medicine. Horseshoe crab blood contains amebocytes (and is also a beautiful blue color), which play a similar role to white blood cells for vertebrates in defending the organism against pathogens. Amebocytes from the blood of L. polyphemus are used to make Limulus amebocyte lysate, which is used by pharmaceutical companies to detect bacterial endotoxins.

Horseshoe crab milkmaid: a job we do not want.

The fact is that sometimes when we explore a scientific phenomenon, we're not sure what we're going to find. The answers to common problems don't always lie in the common sphere, or we would have already solved them. Is it possible that this research will turn up nothing more important than some interesting facts about duck schlongs... just like research into new cancer treatments will just turn up some poisonous shit we can't put into our own bodies. Grants are awarded on the basis of many factors, including the quality and competence of the researcher behind the proposal and potential for furthering research within a field, not solely for the potential uses towards humankind. Otherwise unexpected advances like this might not happen.

So instead of hating on certain scientists' grant success in this dark time for research funding, lets be grateful for the scientific advances we have made, and be optimistic about the cures of the future. And in the meantime, write to your government representatives to let them know that we need to fund science if we want to fund progress, even if it does mean we learn a lot more than we ever expected to about duck dicks along the way.

UPDATE: Patricia Brennan, one of the lead scientists in this research project, has written a fantastic article about the value of her research. Check it out!