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The fragmentation of science and medicine research in recent years has led to the creation of subdisciplines with distinct identities and ethics. Like many social communities, these subdisciplines have found websites of federal funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) to be an effective and efficient home in which to solidify that identity and communicate those values. Despite the lack of collaborative, Web 2.0 technologies, the sites of NSF and NIH are able to communicate the ethics of the science communities they serve through rhetorical structures as diverse as graphics, page layout, and site structures. This article explores that role of NSF and NIH, including the rhetoric used, the ethics presented, and their broader implications.

Especially disturbing to me, a scholar of rhetoric, was the tendency to look for easy answers and apply little creativity in developing a project's broader impacts statement.Submitting grant proposals to federal agencies is a familiar activity for academic scientists. It's far from rare for young principal investigators --and old ones --to spend more of their time writing grants than working at the lab bench. Federal money is the fossil fuel of the research enterprise; other types of funding can propel a lab --and a career --forward, but federal money makes academic research hum.So a lot of attention has been given to grant writing. Countless books have been written. Graduate schools offer grant-writing courses. University administrations fund workshops and reward successful grant writers with tenure, promotion, and honors.All of this makes it surprising that, apart from data on applicant statistics, funding rates, and such issued by the agencies themselves, there's little empirical research on how the process works.Recently, I completed an empirical, qualitative research project aimed at understanding the social and communication dynamics among the players in the grant-writing process, especially applicants --both novice and experienced --program officers, and reviewers. I analyzed grant proposals and conducted interviews and focus groups with 19 researchers, including five former and two current National Science Foundation (NSF) program officers (POs).

Pa R t o n e : l ay i n g t h e F o u n dat i o n S -e d u cat i n g a n d l e a R n i n g F R o m a c c R e d i t i n g b o d i e S

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