Delving Further into the Funding Gap Between White and Black Researchers

As is now well known, black scientists are less successful than their white counterparts in obtaining support from NIH R01 awards as designated Principal Investigators (PIs) (see here and here). Though recent NIH efforts are showing promise to enhance diversity in the biomedical workforce (see this post), much work is still needed to address the funding gap. In a paper recently published in Science Advances, we delved into the underlying factors associated with this funding gap. We identified three decision points where disparate outcomes arose between white and black researchers: 1) the decision to bring applications to discussion during peer review study section meetings; 2) impact score assignments for those applications brought to discussion; and (3) a previously unstudied factor, topic choice – that is what topic the investigators chose to study. We analyzed 157,549 R01 applications, both new and renewals, from fiscal years 2011-2015. We confirmed previous findings that black researchers submit fewer applications as PIs than white researchers. Applications with black scientists as PIs were brought to discussion in peer review only 77% as frequently as applications from white researcher PI’s (Figure 1).   Figure 1 When applications from black researchers were discussed in study section, they received worse impact scores— 38.4 + 13.4 vs 35.2 + 12.6.  Combining lower submission rates, lower discussion rates, and worse impact, black scientists r...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike application Diversity Funding data topic selection Source Type: funding