I’m coming up for air during my grant writing (so far this weekend I’ve spent in excess of ten hours yesterday and today just writing; all the rest of the time I spent obsessing about what I wrote and what I still needed to write), but you know I’m desperate when I start posting stuff like this:

UF [University of Florida] researchers reviewed 96 cases that had complete medical records from more than 4,000 entries in the International Shark Attack File, a record maintained by UF’s Florida Museum of Natural History. Assigning scores to clinical findings such as blood pressure, location and depth of injury, damage to organs and death, the team created a scoring system called the Shark-Induced Trauma Scale, or SIT Scale.

[snip]

“If it’s just an extremity and it’s an abrasion, it’s just a level I injury,” [lead researcher and surgeon Dr. Ashley] Lentz said. “If a shark comes up and takes a big bite out of a thigh and takes out the femoral artery, then that’s a life-ending bite — pretty quickly — and you are talking about a level V injury,” Lentz said.

[snip]

Findings showed that 41.7 percent of attacks were level I; 16.7 percent were level II; 18.8 percent were level III; 14.6 percent were level IV; and 8.3 percent were level V.(Florida Today)

Apparently most shark bites are just nibbles. 90% of the Florida encounters resulted in minor lacerations. Since there are about 60 some shark attacks a year, worldwide, the other 10% is still a half dozen people, and each year there are 3 or 4 fatal outcomes.

My attention was drawn to the shark attack story just after reading the most recent draft of my proposal while asking myself, how would a reviewer look at this?

Coincidence? I don’t think so.