Short version: After about 10 rejections, I post my proposals to the field at large and move on to other things. Read below to see how this has paid off in the past. Check back periodically, as I’ll surely post a few here over the course of 2026.

Dissertayfield version: When I was a Ph.D. student, my supervisor, the late Dr. Ruth Gates, would go to conferences or workshops and basically just give away all her good ideas to anyone who would listen. A year or so later, I’d start seeing papers from the same people she gave these ideas to (which is great), but never with her name on them (not even in the acknowledgements). I was furious on her behalf, confronted her on it, and she laughed and basically said “Of course they did. Why else do you think I told them in the first place?!” Although she didn’t say it, the reason was because she had TOO many good ideas yet lacked the time, money, and/or personnel to tackle all of them; why not outsource? Better to be done by SOMEONE than no one at all.

Now I am in no way saying that I am a wellspring of good ideas like her, but 6-7 years ago, I had a proposal on using precision medicine approaches to study coral health based on a paper I had written. I submitted it to probably 10 agencies, and it was always rejected. I later turned to other topics, not simply because of dejection but actually because taking this sort of approach coral-by-coral is impractical at large scales. It might work for husbandry facilities, though.

So, one day in a bad mood, I posted the entire proposal (including even preliminary data, figures, and all, highly detailed text) on my website and said “Someone should submit this proposal. I can’t get it funded, but maybe you can.” No strings attached. I didn’t say to cite me, put me on the proposal, pay me, or anything. Just take and submit.

Well, someone did 2-3 years ago and got a low-mid six-figure grant out of it. They didn’t even bother to change my language (which might haunt them when they go to see that I published on this topic before using such language!). Now, is this my fault? Entirely. Am I angry with the two primary investigators? Not really, though I had one scurry away from me at a conference because she surely knows that I know. And you know what? I think the project is going to be a success and yield some cool findings, despite my misgivings about precision medicine making sense on multi-hectare spatial scales.

What’s the message here? Well obviously most of you should probably never do this, or if you do, it’s probably fair to ask for SOMETHING in return. But at the same time, I might actually do it again! Stay tuned for a “dead proposals bin” on coralreefdiagnostics.com. I’ve had my data-driven AI decision support for coral reefs proposal rejected about 6-7 times, so if anyone wants to submit it to CORDAP or somewhere like that, let me know (though I might ask to be on it)!