Inside STAT: In the fierce competition for science funding, even a typeface glitch can be fatal

(DOM SMITH / STAT)

Dr. Joseph Schlesinger panicked when he got the email from a government staffer informing him that he’d made a “fatal error” in his grant application to the Department of Veterans Affairs that he had spent months writing. But his error wasn’t medical — it was typographical. “Unfortunately, this application used a non-approved font typeface and point size in the Research Plan, which is a fatal error,” the VA staffer wrote to him, “and therefore has been withdrawn from review.” Schlesinger maintains he didn’t use the banned lettering — and has delved into the depths of graphic design to prove it. STAT’s Eric Boodman has the story — read here.