Black applicants to a prestigious research grant program at the National Institutes of Health are awarded funding at a significantly lower rate than their white peers. The NIH has been intensively investigating this funding gap since a 2011 report revealed the extent of the problem, looking for underlying mechanisms to use as opportunities for corrective intervention.
NIH's latest finding, described in a study released this month in the open-access journal Science Advances, reveals that part of the gap can be attributed to differences in the types of topics scientists propose studying and how those topics are valued by grant reviewers.
The study of grant applications submitted between 2011 and 2015 suggests African American scientists may be more likely to pursue research in topic areas such as community-oriented research on disease prevention, for example, versus more microscopic-level research on cellular mechanisms or the basics of genetics. Those population-based topics aren't being funded as readily.
And that's a problem with the system, some outside researchers point out — not with the choice of research topic.
"I do think that the areas of research that apparently are being funded at a lower rate are important," says David Asai, senior director for science education at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an advocate for diversity in STEM, who was not involved in the NIH analysis. "This study might prompt the community to think about the underlying biases we might have in deciding what sorts of research deserve greater attention."
The NIH study looked at funding rates in the form of successful applications for R01 grants, which are designed to support "health-related research and development based on the mission of the NIH."
Despite NIH efforts to diversify the pool of scholars doing medical research, white applicants for these grants continue to receive funding at nearly twice the rate of black applicants — 17.7% of white applicants were approved in fiscal years 2011-2015 compared with 10.7% of black applicants.
The researchers analyzed keywords in the topics of 157,549 grant applications and found that some topics were close to four times more likely to gain funding support.