Anonymizing research funding applications could reduce ‘prestige privilege’

For research funders seeking to minimize bias in their selection process, removing applicants’ institutional affiliations from their submissions could help address a common disparity: disproportionate funding going to those at the most prestigious places. That’s the finding from researchers at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, who reported last month in eLife that anonymized applications partially reduced the effects of reputational bias and evened the playing field for early-career faculty at lesser known institutions applying for their Beckman Young Investigator (BYI) awards. The findings illustrate how some applicants “enjoy a leg up in grant writing, based on the name of their institution alone,” says Daniel Larremore, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder who studies inequity in academia; a 2022 study he co-authored found that 80% of U.S.-trained faculty come from just 20% of universities . He adds that the new study also provides an excellent strategy for mitigating this bias, which funders can use to make their review processes fairer. The study adds to a growing body of knowledge about what anonymizing funding applications can—and can’t—do. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, experimented with concealing information about applicants’ identities from peer reviewers as part of an effort to understand why Black applicants are 35% less likely than white...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research