NIH Uncovers Racial Disparity in Grant Awards

It has been a while, but I am back and hopefully consistently so. Thanks to all of you who have encouraged engagement during my hiatus.

Let's explore the impact of disparate funding for black scientists. While studies like this can always be questioned as to method and reliability with over larger sample populations, the fact that the study was published in a reputable journal says that this issue is bigger than one of one race vs. another. This is an American problem. Disparity exists just like diversity does.

The questions are numerous: How well do we understand the impact of these disparities on our ability to compete globally? What is the impact of disparities such as those described in the study to our healthcare system overall?

As we examine the future of health, how science gets done and who does science is critical to our success in the U.S. and in a way globally given the historic impact of U.S. scientists. The conversation has to start even as far back as elementary education. This is significant, let's treat it as much bigger than we can see at present.


Biomedical Research Funding
NIH Uncovers Racial Disparity in Grant Awards

by Jocelyn Kaiser

It takes no more than a visit to a few labs or a glance at the crowd at a scientific meeting to know that African-American scientists are rare in biomedical research. But an in-depth analysis of grant data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) on page 1015 in this issue of Science finds that the problem goes much deeper than impressions. Black Ph.D. scientists—and not other minorities—were far less likely to receive NIH funding for a research idea than a white scientist from a similar institution with the same research record. The gap was large: A black scientist's chance of winning NIH funding was 10 percentage points lower than that of a white scientist.

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