Man, your whole process has been such a deja vu thing for me. I still get "ambitious project that she may not be able to finish" and "more unifying theoretical framework, please," though it's no longer enough to get my grants rejected.

Do they spell out at any point exactly what they think isn't feasible? I mean, if it's just the number of participants, that's easy to fix (I see your point about that, but I had to do that with my first grant, and it worked out all right). But if it's more like that they think your project has too many facets, that will require a whole different kind of tweaking.

It sounds like you're learning from the process, though, as I have too. That's good!

-J