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I am currently part of a larger and quite broad in terms of expertise research group that is preparing a proposal for a grant / research center. Part of the proposal is a summary of the CVs for the co-investigators (CIs) of the project which also includes successful grant applications and previous funding.

There I noticed that some of the CIs have included grants and funding from foreign agencies (some of which more than a million dollars) that were not awarded to them or they were not involved in the application, they were just part of the research center that the grants were awarded to, or grants that were awarded to their supervisors.

This obviously makes their CV appear a lot stronger than it actually is in the application but it appears to be quite unethical to include them like that (the phrasing in the CV does not state that they actually got the grants but does not represent their actual contribution). As these are CIs that I do not directly work with and, for example I have not met one of them, I am not sure what the best course of action would be.

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    Are these suspicions confirmed, or just that, suspicions?
    – Bluebird
    Commented Dec 19, 2017 at 7:46
  • @FrankFYC They were never suspicions. They are confirmed.
    – o4tlulz
    Commented Dec 20, 2017 at 0:09

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I think you should bring this up. The motivation to bring this up is, that a tampered CV will most likely be detected by the referees or the agency and if so, this may most likely affect the chances for getting the grant negatively. Since the overall goal is to get the grant, you should bring this up.

So, you could approach your supervisor and note that you are not sure if the CVs are clear enough about these grants and that it currently looks a though these CIs won these grants personally which seems implausible to you. If your supervisor agrees, you (or they) can simple ask the respective CIs to clarify if these grant were actually awarded to them or their institution and, if applicable, be more clear in their CVs.

Including grants where you have been only one CI of many and that have been awarded to an institution in CVs is common, but I advise to be precise here. Something like

Grant XYZ from agency B, 1.000.000$ (contribution of Prof A: subproject 300.000$ and design of general strategy)

could be appropriate.

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  • Maybe I did not explained it correctly. In one case, the person was just a Master's student to an awarded project, yet the project is included in the list.
    – o4tlulz
    Commented Dec 20, 2017 at 0:10
  • Is the master student claiming that he/she won the award? The key work here is what kind of claim, if the student is claiming that he/she was part of a team that won or worked with a team that won, then the statement is still valid. This is leagues different than an individual effort.
    – Bluebird
    Commented Dec 20, 2017 at 0:34
  • The key issue here is that wrong or imprecise data will jeopardize the chances of getting the grant. This should be your main concern and this is what you should bring up.
    – Dirk
    Commented Dec 20, 2017 at 9:56

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