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发帖数: 61690 | 1 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6088/1490.full
To counter a racial tilt in the funding of basic research grants, the
National Institutes of Health should launch a “continuous” review and take
remedial steps against bias, a working group told NIH Director Francis
Collins at a meeting on 14 June. These recommendations, laid out in a draft
report to the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director, are aimed at
correcting what the working group calls a “disturbing discrepancy”: Black
applicants are less likely to win independent investigator grants (R01
awards) than whites.
The panel—co-chaired by Reed Tuckson, executive vice president and chief of
medical affairs at UnitedHealth Group in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and John
Ruffin, director of NIH's Institute on Minority Health and Health
Disparities—laid out a wideranging agenda. But it offered few specifics and
no cost estimates. Tuckson told reporters that it's too soon to nail down
such details. But he said he would like to see NIH and other federal
agencies get together on a major, multiyear effort to support institutions
that train minority scientists.
Collins asked his advisory group to dig into the issue after a study by
economist Donna Ginther of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and
colleagues found that black applicants for NIH grants in 2000 through 2006
were significantly less likely (by 10 percentage points) to be funded than
white applicants (Science, 19 August 2011, p. 1015). Blacks were also less
likely to apply for basic science funding, Ginther found. When the working
group examined a set of grants from 2006 to 2010, it discovered similar
biases.
Of “particular significance,” the working group states, is that 73% of the
applications from black researchers in 2006 through 2010 were rejected
without a full discussion—or in NIH jargon, “triaged”—while 59% of
applications from whites were rejected this way. The report notes, however,
that “analyses and discussions did not point to a single, definitive cause
for NIH funding disparities.”
Still, the panel says, NIH needs to gather data and take action. It should
create a new position of chief diversity officer, with “a suitable budget.
” It should set up a new working group of behavioral and social scientists
to do research—for example, to examine reviewers' written comments on
applications. NIH should also conduct pilot testing of “bias/diversity
awareness training” for NIH review staff. And the agency should experiment
with anonymous reviews, blanking out applicants' identities and institutions
. Most importantly, NIH should establish mentorship networks to assist
minority students early in their school careers and help fund more
undergraduate scholarships.
Collins said during the advisory committee meeting that he is committed to
doing whatever it takes to reduce disparities in grant success rates. “This
is a very serious issue,” Collins said. “To have this circumstance
continue … is simply unacceptable.” |
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