Take an Investigator's Scientific Question Intake

An investigator calls or emails with an early idea, before there is a protocol, before there is even a settled hypothesis, sometimes before the investigator has decided what they actually want to ask. As a medical science liaison, your job in that first conversation is narrow. You listen, you clarify the scientific question, and you point to the correct process for an independent research inquiry. You do not evaluate the idea the way a sponsor would, you do not shape the study design, and you do not suggest that funding or support will follow just because the idea sounds promising. That narrow job is harder than it looks, because investigators often want more from you than an intake, and the conversation can drift toward a commitment you are not authorized to make.

Why This Conversation Goes Wrong

Investigators often reach out at the most fragile stage of an idea, when they are excited and want a signal that the work is worth doing. They ask you, directly or indirectly, to tell them whether the company will support it. If you answer that question, even with a hedge, you have stepped outside your role. You are not the review committee. You do not know how a full submission will be scored, and you have no authority to promise an outcome.

The pressure to reassure someone is real. Investigators are often collaborators you respect, sometimes people you have worked with for years, and telling them you cannot predict an outcome can feel unhelpful or even cold. Some liaisons compensate by offering opinions on the protocol itself, suggesting an endpoint, or nudging the investigator toward a design more likely to get funded. That crosses into study direction, which is not your function, and it can also create the appearance that you influenced a scientific proposal you should stay neutral toward.

The other common failure is the opposite one. A liaison so worried about overstepping stays vague and unhelpful, gives no real guidance, and leaves the investigator without a next step. Neither extreme serves the researcher. The goal is a conversation that stays genuinely curious about the science while being precise about what you can and cannot say.

How To Prepare Before The Investigator Calls

Know the submission process cold before you need it. You should be able to describe, without checking a document mid call, what an independent research inquiry requires, who reviews it, and roughly how long a decision takes. Investigators lose confidence fast when a liaison fumbles basic process details, and that fumbling often triggers more pressing for reassurance.

Prepare a small set of questions that keep the conversation on the science rather than the outcome. Ask what gap in the evidence the investigator wants to address, what they have already reviewed in the literature, and what stage their thinking is at. If the conversation touches on published evidence they have already gathered, the approach in Scope a Clinician's Literature Search Request at /industries/pharmaceuticals/blog/pharmaceuticals msl literature search scope covers how to handle that kind of request cleanly, since a research question and a literature question often show up in the same call.

Decide in advance what you will say when someone asks for a commitment, so you are not composing that sentence for the first time under pressure. Have the process resource ready to send, whether that is a document, a web form, or a named contact, so you can hand the investigator something concrete instead of a vague promise to follow up.

What To Say During The Intake

The investigator says, "If I put together a full protocol along these lines, will your company fund it?"

You say, "I cannot predict a funding or review decision from this conversation. What I can do is explain the approved process for an independent research inquiry and make sure your scientific question gets captured accurately from the start. What gap in the evidence are you trying to address with this idea?"

The investigator answers, "There's a subgroup in the current data that doesn't respond the way the rest of the population does, and I want to understand why. I haven't written anything formal yet."

You say, "That's a clear starting point. Have you looked at what's already published on that subgroup, and would it help to walk through what the formal submission needs, so you know what to gather before you write the protocol?"

Notice what the second response does. It reflects the investigator's language back accurately, it does not offer an opinion on whether the subgroup finding is real or promising, and it moves the conversation toward process rather than prediction. If the discussion shifts toward how the drug might explain that subgroup difference, keep the same discipline the exchange in Keep a Mechanism Question Scientifically Balanced at /industries/pharmaceuticals/blog/pharmaceuticals msl mechanism question balanced exchange describes, answering what the evidence shows without implying a claim beyond it.

Mistakes That Undermine The Intake

Do not answer the funding question even partially. Saying something like "ideas like this tend to do well" is still a prediction, and investigators will remember it as one, whether you meant it that way or not.

Do not edit the science. If the investigator's hypothesis seems underdeveloped, your job is to help them articulate it in their own terms, not to suggest a better endpoint or a cleaner design. That is the sponsor review team's function, not yours.

Do not write your notes in a way that implies endorsement. A note that says the idea "looked strong" or "seemed fundable" creates a record that contradicts the neutral role you held on the call. Record the research topic and the information the investigator requested in plain terms, nothing more.

Do not let silence stand in for honesty. If you do not know a detail about the submission process, say so and commit to finding out, rather than guessing or letting the investigator assume the worst about your competence.

How To Practice And Score This Conversation

This intake rewards rehearsal more than most liaison conversations, because the pressure to reassure someone builds gradually across a call rather than arriving all at once. Practice with a colleague who plays an investigator that keeps circling back to the funding question in different phrasing, since real investigators do exactly that when the first answer does not satisfy them.

Score the practice run on three things. First, did the liaison distinguish process questions from outcome questions every time the investigator blurred them. Second, did the liaison stay curious about the science, asking follow up questions about the hypothesis rather than closing the conversation down. Third, did the liaison end the call with a concrete next step, such as a named document or contact, rather than a vague offer to circle back later.

A manager reviewing these calls should also check the written summary against what was actually said. If the notes read more favorably than the call sounded, that gap is worth raising directly. Pharmaceuticals practice conversations at /industries/pharmaceuticals cover a range of these exchanges, including this one, so a liaison can rehearse the same scenario several times with different investigator pressure points before facing it for real. Running the same scenario more than once inside DealSpeak also makes it easier to notice which phrasing holds up under repeated pushing and which starts to slip toward a promise.

Closing

The investigator intake works when you treat curiosity about the science and discipline about the process as the same skill, not a trade off between them. Get the hypothesis right in the investigator's own words, point them to the real process, and leave the outcome exactly where it belongs, undecided. Practicing this conversation before you need it is what keeps you steady when an investigator pushes for more.

You can rehearse this exact conversation in the Pharmaceuticals practice conversations library before it happens for real. When you have this one down, read Scope a Clinician's Literature Search Request next.