Analysis: Why I failed. (Part 2)

Driving home, I hear on NPR that Haitians are rioting because their food costs too much. I get home and see this on AlJazeera.net:

Food riots have erupted in countries including Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Madagascar, and the Phillipines in the past month....Prices in these countries for foodstuffs such as rice, wheat, sorghum and maize have doubled.....Causes of crisis range from financial speculation on food commodities, desertification, population increases, China and India's economic growth and use of grains to make biofuel.

This makes me very sad. And along with feeling very bad for people who are starving, it makes me want to have a pity party for myself, and charge the National Science Foundation for the punch and chip dip. This brings me to installment 2 in my backlash at NSF for rejecting my grad school fellowship proposal.

You see, those two things I bolded in that paragraph up there are two things that are wrong with the world, and two major components of what I proposed to study with grant money from NSF. I still can and will, without NSF. I just really want to believe that a project like mine would be deemed worthy of being funded.

Here is my project in a nutshell: there's a plant called Jatropha curcas and it grows like a weed most anywhere in the world. Thailand, Guatemala, the Netherlands, California. It makes little fruits that are loaded with veggie oil. You press them, and voila! you have a diesel substitute, or fuel for cooking stoves or for lamps, or oil for making soap. In a poor, developing country in Africa, this can have tremendous potential. For a small, primitive village dependent on growing food to stay alive, there isn't often the luxury of excess cash to import expensive diesel fuel, and hence no advancement into mechanical power to pump clean water, improve agricultural productivity, etc. But if you could, say use your unproductive, infertile, outlying lands to grow your own fuel source, you might stop chopping down forests around your village (desertification) to collect cooking fuel, and you won't have to sacrifice your food-producing prime agricultural soils. I wanted to be able to study this in great and, above all, practical detail -- actually grow the stuff, quantify its yield on those outlying, non-food-producing, infertile soils, see if it could be done feasibly, and then share my findings. Very little research along these lines exists. Even uber-progressive Wageningen University recognizes this is ground-breaking stuff, and has an entire "programme" devoted to learning more about this plant and making sure the world knows about it. I can be part of that.

But not with the blessing of NSF. Because they think my project sucks.

What's the deal? Specifically, my rejection letter from NSF..."Extensive academic and practical experience have given you a solid foundation with which to undertake your graduate work. The choice of topic seems pedestrian, but was chosen, perhaps, to fit in at U. Hawaii destination."

First of all, seriously guys, that's a tad condescending. If you really wanted to insult UHM I guess you could have peed on their front lawn and posted a YouTube video to prove it.

And pedestrian!? I'll be the first to admit, and proudly, that my idea was very ordinary. I think a third-grader with more than a 30-second attention span could probably grasp the underlying logic. What's so wrong with that? Hey, NSF, perhaps you didn't catch the part about PEOPLE DYING BECAUSE WE'VE STARTED TO CONVERT ALL THOSE PRIME SOILS TO GROWING ETHANOL INSTEAD OF GROWING DINNER.

Okay then, let's see what projects are worthy of NSF bucks. End baby seal poaching? Invent solar-powered super cars? Stop all human conflict forever?

Nope. Lasers.

African lasers.

Yep, NSF is handing out a hundred-thousand smackeroos to promote biological application of lasers in the US and Africa. "Good luck growing that food, starving people; wish we could help you out with that, but we're too busy PLAYING WITH OUR LASERS."

Or take for example this gem: $36,322 to fund a workshop to help identify "the next set of grand challenges in biology and how they best can be met by plant research." What the heck? What about the challenge that I've identified and the research that I propose to best meet that challenge? (Perhaps if I apply for some workshop money to do some more talking about that challenge....)

Am I being too hard on NSF? Well here's the other reason they rejected me: "...the proposed plan of research needs more precise, and clearly thought out objectives and planning to be strengthened." Okay, let's look at the stated objectives of that brilliant African laser proposal. No joke, here they are:

Specifically the objectives are: 1) Host an advanced research and learning institute by bringing together U.S. and African experts, post-docs, advanced graduate students, and other researchers, including HBCU faculty, and giving them a state-of-the-art, cutting edge view of important and exciting research directions; 2) Share information on new breakthroughs in the field; 3) Explore the commonality of interests and promote collaborations between U.S. and African researchers, with special attention to promoting women in the research enterprise; 4) Establish joint research projects among different participating Institutions.

First, my stated objectives were way better and more specific than that. And second, to what do these objectives not apply?? Hog farming? Check. Sex research? Check. Hot-air balloon hobbyists? Check.

A hundred thousand dollars? And my objectives needed refining?

Maybe what I'm saying is that it's time for a little honest, straightforward, ordinary-ness in the scientific community. Maybe hard science doesn't necessarily have to be hard, just be relevant. Poverty, hunger, basic humanity....these are the problems of today. Let's be real about them today.

And now please excuse me. I have some brown spots in my lawn to repair.