John, yeah I agree with what you say, but I've had various of those experiences on big budget proposals...one (I was a secondary person) was finally funded on the third or 4th try..it probably improved slightly during that time. One, where I was lead, got 3 excellents on the reviews and the very good(s) (and maybe there was a good) were also enthusiastic, but the panel did not like it as well as that. We resubmitted it, probably slightly improved each time, and failed to get excellent reviews, so gave up after the 2nd or 3rd try. Another one, where I was a secondary person, probably got worse each time and we gave up after 3 or 4 tries...the last version did have an increased budget.

The pre-proposal that I was talking about, I had almost no role in the pre-proposal...in fact, did not see it, it was probably the same as before, and the well-known lead P.I. assumed it was going to be asked for full proposal and was assigning us some tasks when I suggested he/she check first with program director. This program only asked for 50 full proposals out of over 500 submissions, and will fund only 17 of those 50.

The problem is that sometimes, maybe often, when you try and address reviewer's comments, the next batch of reviewers have a different set of objections. Sometimes the Program Director will try and send the proposal to the same reviewers (the reviewers will often state that they have seen it before), but sometimes, for example those that already gave excellents, they may not want to review it again. Sometimes a single negative review will be discounted, but often not. Panels and Program Directors are looking for reasons to reject because they have lots of excellent proposals and not enough money to fund them all.
Chris