Charlie West Case supplemental information.

Here is some further information about this case which you wouldn't necessarily know unless you've been asked by a federal funding agency to review grant proposals:

Officially, a grant proposal submitted for consideration by a funding agency is viewed as confidential information. Not only does this mean that the researchers asked to review the proposal are not supposed to share it with anyone else, but they are also usually instructed to destroy all paper and electronic copies of the proposal when they are done writing their review of it for the funding agency.

As such, a grant proposal is not a citable document in the same way that a journal article is. So, there is no way that Charlie West could make use of the old grant proposal in writing his own and then "cite it properly". Another difficulty with giving appropriate credit to the original author is that grant proposals are sometimes reviewed "blind" -- that is, reviewed with the grant author's name removed, so that reviewers can focus on the content of the proposal.

Finally, many grant proposals now include a statement from the person submitting the proposal attesting to the fact that they themselves have written the proposal, come up with the ideas driving the proposed research, etc. Federal funding agencies regard it as a serious matter if someone claims the work in a grant proposal is theirs when it is not.

One more detail that's worth noting: for many granting programs within federal agencies like NIH and NSF, the deadline to apply is not once in a lifetime but every six to twelve months. (Also, applying for a grant does not guarantee that you'll get the grant.) This means that Charlie West's sense that he needs to apply for the grant in THIS funding cycle is probably overblown.

Charlie West Case frequently asked questions

What's the deal with the old grant proposal? Is this something Charlie West and/or his advisor wrote?

No. This is a proposal that a professor at his graduate university was reviewing for a granting agency -- that is, s/he was evaluating the grant proposal to decide whether it was of high quality, innovative, likely to succeed, etc., so that the granting agency could use this information to decide whether the proposal should get funding. The professor who was reviewing the proposal asked Charlie for assistance in making this evaluation.

But according to the supplementary information above, reviewers of grant proposals are supposed to keep them confidential. Does that mean that the professor who was reviewing the old grant proposal messed up by sharing it with Charlie West?

It's possible. Granting agencies do recognize that reviewers sometimes need to get help from others whose expertise is relevant to the particular research project being proposed. In these cases, though, the reviewer is usually supposed to inform the granting agency that they would like to ask a colleague for help -- and to identify the colleague by name -- and get permission from the granting agecy to let this colleague see the proposal. Maybe the professor who was reviewing the original grant in this case did that, maybe not -- we don't know.

Did the old grant proposal get funded?

We don't know.

Do funding agencies maintain copies of submitted grant proposals?

They certainly keep copies of grant proposals that they have funded. And, as the agencies have gone over to electronic submission systems (and as storage of data becomes cheaper and cheaper), they probably maintain copies of submitted grant proposals that were not funded.

Do funding agencies run submitted grant proposals through plagiarism detection software?

If they don't already, there are certainly people lobbying for this to happen. (A number of scientific journals have started to do this as well.)?

Nope. Plagiarism is using the words or ideas of others without properly citing the source of those words or ideas.

If Charlie West shows up for his job at Heartland State University without a grant to fund his research, is he doomed as far as getting tenure?

It's extremely unlikely. Usually in a tenure track job, your university provides some "start-up funds" to help you get your lab set up and to help you get your research started ... just in case you're still trying to secure a grant to support that research. There's a lot involved in getting a research lab going, from making sure the lab space has the features it needs (and if it doesn't, you need to arrange renovation), to buying equipment, to recruiting graduate students and hiring technicians and/or postdocs. Some of this involves more logistics than money, which means that even with the grant in hand it might be a while before Charlie West's lab is up and running.