Be interesting to know if similar research funding bias exists in the UK; anyone know of any work that's been done on this?
New study finds white applicants nearly twice as likely to receive funding than blacks.
Peter Fulham, The Slate, Aug. 19, 2011
Black scientists are less likely than their white counterparts to receive funding for research from the National Institute of Health, according to a new study by the journal Science.
The Washington Post reports that an analysis of the data reveals that blacks were only about half as likely as whites to receive funding from the organization for their research proposals. Out of a pool of more than 40,000 researchers who submitted 80,000 grant applications to the NIH between 2000 and 2006, only roughly 16 percent of those from black applicants were accepted. Applications from whites, on the other hand, received funding 29 percent of the time.
The authors of the study said that the results were troubling, since medical research should draw from the widest possible pool of experts. "We have a very serious issue,” Donna K. Ginther, director of the University of Kansas Center of Science, Technology and Economic Policy, who led the study, told the Post. “Science needs to reflect the diversity and power and potential of the population."
NIH Director Francis S. Collins vowed to uncover the root cause of the racial discrepancy, and said that he had asked two advisory groups within the organization to investigate the study's findings. "I can’t exclude, after talking to lots of colleagues, the possibility that even today... there is still an unconscious, insidious form bias that subtly influences opinions of people,” Collins said. "That may be very disturbing for people in the scientific community to contemplate, but I think we have to think that’s one of the possibilities."
Dr Jon Cloke
Lecturer/Research Associate
Geography Department
Loughborough University
Loughborough LE11 3TU
Office: 01509 228193
Mob: 07984 813681
|