The “Background and Significance” Section
This is where you sell your ideas to the reviewers. It is one of the most important sections. If you don’t convince them that your proposal is important, it won’t matter if you’ve tons of preliminary data and well designed experiments. Many people overlook the fact that this section is also the “Significance” and not just “Background.” Some background is essential. You should briefly explain what is known. The reviewers will greatly appreciate it if you keep it brief and focused on the application, rather than spewing out random facts. Enough detail should be given so that the reviewers will understand your application. Usually at least one reviewer, and sometimes all of them, is outside your field. A succinct review of your field is essential. On occasion, reviewers will criticize an application for not proposing to do an obvious experiment that’s already been done. While many people react to this by complaining about the reviewer’s ignorance, chances are that this background information wasn’t described in the application and so the reviewers were just reacting to what they read (as well as being ignorant). Few reviewers have the time to spend hours in the library, and it really helps to have a well written background section. Alternatively, if one or more of the reviewers are very familiar with your field, this section is where you convince them that you also know your stuff. Appropriate references are critical. If the reviewers have published anything on the subject, they will probably consider their paper to be a key contribution to the field and expect it to be cited. Don’t stretch this too far though.
It’s often helpful to show a model of your system with a few question marks on those points that will be addressed in your proposed experiments. To write a bad application, show a model that you think looks really cool, even though it’s unrelated to what you’re proposing. For a good application, explain why your proposed experiments are such an obvious and important extension of your preliminary studies, that they (the reviewers) would have to be pond scum to give your application an unfundable score (but don’t use the term “pond scum” unless that’s really what you’re studying). For example, a good format is “x is known, and y is known, but the key study that will put x and y together, thus curing all human disease, has not yet been done.” Of course, you have to then propose to do this key study.
Bad Example
A bad application uses the “Everest” approach (people climb mount Everest “because it’s there”): We have previously isolated and sequenced a particular protein from human, rabbit, sheep, rat, mouse, gerbil, duck, chicken, frog, zebrafish, Drosophila, Aplysia, and yeast, but we haven’t yet done this for hamster.
Worse Example: The “random information” approach.
Proteins are made of amino acids. Amino acids are made of elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. Elements are made up of subatomic particles such as electrons, protons, and neutrons. Electrons, protons and neutrons are made up of quarks such as up, down, top, bottom, sleepy, and grumpy. E=mc2. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. E pluribus unum, with liberty and justice for all, in sickness and in health, tastes great but less filling. Amen.
Good Example (guaranteed to work):
The toxin isolated from the Asian Pygmy Cobra is the deadliest poison known. It is rapidly absorbed through the skin and then slowly affects the nervous system, causing an extremely painful death approximately five years after ingestion. Surprisingly, little is known about the specific mechanism of action of the toxin, which is essential for the development of an antidote. Our proposed research on the Asian Pygmy Cobra toxin will reveal the mechanism of action and lead to the development of an antidote. This research is especially timely as the grant application you are reading has been impregnated with the toxin and by the time you’ve read this page, you have received a lethal dose. Your only chance of avoidi