Narrow minded or am I asking too much?

[wilomn]

In some cases, you are right, there are highly political agendas to your grant not getting reviewed favorably. However, in the majority of cases, it's likely something you didn't explain very well.

And both as a disclaimer and an example, I am totally guilty of doing the exact same thing I'm arguing the OP should not do. Don't get me wrong, it's easy to do. Getting so carried away in the research for research's sake that I completely forget to explain the significance of it to people. It should be so obvious? Right? Wrong.

I was writing a large grant on a new technique that I was extremely excited about, found deeply fascinating and wrote a detailed proposal about utilizing it to study a particular protein of interest, and submitted it to my colleagues to get feedback. And, keep in mind, these are people who like me, who want me to succeed, and have no political agenda towards me or my proposal. They hated it. The technique being novel and new and that no one had done it before and it should be done meant absolute bupkiss to them. I had gotten so carried away in doing this one thing because *I* thought it would be incredibly interesting that I forgot to make it relevant to anyone else. A review panel would have eaten me alive.

So on the one hand, it's good the OP is getting feedback to his approach. And it's one thing to convince a bunch of scientists to do "research for research's sake", because hey, it's your career. Sink or swim. But it's an entirely different thing to go up to non-scientists and say "I want to do SCIENCE, let me use your precious animals and never-you-mind the reason." In that case, you better believe it's your responsibility to explain the "research process", significance, or whatever the hell else they may ask.

If nothing else, talking with the "general public" is good experience, and I wholeheartedly disagree that it's not your job to do so. Carl Sagan was generally regarded with disdain (edit: by scientists) for his attempts and outreach to the public, but look how much inspiration and knowledge he ultimately DID bring to the "lay person". That's how it should be done.

You seem to be forgetting, or missing on purpose, the fact that there is NOTHING new in the research this guy wants to do. Sort of like apples and cumquats, neh?