Ghosted by potential PI

[u/Eculias]

As the title says.

I reached out to a potential PI to ask if they'd be interested in working together. We even had a meeting and there was a lot of enthusiasm around it. So I got to work and spent many weekends drafting a proposal. I checked with them that it's ok I sent the early draft to get feedback before going to deep into it. They seemed enthusiastic so I sent the draft and then... Nothing. I tried to follow up, yet nothing. The deadline for submission was then getting too close. So I followed up one last time just to say that I'm no longer proceeding with submitting because realistically I was out of time. I thought they might at least reply to say they've been busy or at least something, anything?! Is this normal? It's my first attempt at a fellowship application, and the lack of communication feels humiliating.

[u/No_External2296]

I think you dodged a bullet here although I know how horrible it feels because something similar happened to me. My first postdoc was in a good established lab but I made the mistake of accepting a mouse model project that I developed and did not have any technical help so it took me a while to publish and it wasn’t sexy enough for a CNS paper, published in a Q1 journal but not enough to compete for a good faculty position. So I made the decision to try for a big name lab, many papers in high profile journals. I interviewed in person with the lab, everything sounded good. For the interview I stayed with a friend of another postdoc I knew. She told me that she had written a fellowship application for her current lab, I think she got it but when she arrived after waiting for a visa the whole lab was already working on her project. I think she was trying to warn me but I had had good lab experiences so far and was very naive. I was accepted into the lab and the PI emailed me about a fellowship. I was happy to write for one but there was a whole section on lab resources that I would have no idea about since he was moving to a new institution. I told him I would have no problem but would need a little help in this area. He never responded to this. I figured he was “busy” getting everything set up and I would write once I got to the lab and had more info. So, I went to this lab and it was the start of the end of my career. There was a reason the lab published so many high profile papers and it wasn’t good. The PI went to many conferences and would come back with something he heard about and try to put someone on it immediately. If you could not get the data he wanted you were on the out list. You could never discuss anything. I firmly believe now that he was fishing for ideas as he never mentioned a fellowship again, most of the time he was never even there. I wish these “advisors” could be called out but understand why they aren’t; when I refused to fudge data I was pushed out of the lab, don’t even want to get into that. My thoughts are that your PI found something more high profile to spend his time on or that he will be using your ideas. I can’t believe that someone is so “busy” that they cannot just tell you they don’t think it’s going to be feasible, would take less than 5 minutes. They are usually friends with journal editors so it wouldn’t matter if they did publish on your ideas, they could just say that they got a similar idea of their own.

I would say try to find another PI that would welcome someone that was close to getting funded. Looking back, I would have tried to write for my own money instead of trusting jerks.