You may already be aware of the article that came out first in Science and widely republished drawing attention to the fact that black PhD primary investigators (PIs) are awarded NIH grants at a significantly lower rate than whites. I read a snippet of the coverage – a republished and severely tripped down paragraph in the Austin Statesman I picked up in the airport last week. My first thought was, “oy veh, time for more arguments about racism in the NIH.” But wait! There has to be more to it, because the grant-funding panels don’t consider race when scoring proposals. In fact, when writing and submitting grants, there isn’t even a space or a box you check off to indicate your ethnicity. Another thing I couldn’t wrap my head around was, if, say, the panels were racist and had some way of knowing about the PIs ethnicity, it doesn’t explain why there are only marginal differences in funding rates for hispanics compared to white PIs. I mean, for one thing, it’s easier to pick a hispanic name off a page than it is a black name, so if the panels were somehow exercising white favoritism based on prior knowledge of the applicants ethnicity, I would think that hispanic applicants would have fared similarly to blacks. But that wasn’t the case.
It also doesn’t make a lick of sense that affirmative action-style practices of promoting blacks through the system would be a factor. The researchers examined and controlled for rates of tenure, publication of research, and citations of publication – all measures of the quality of the applicants. They found that ethnicity didn’t appear to be a factor in these measures of scientific skill (duh), and yet black PIs were still 13% less likely to receive these grants (wtf??).
So, what the [bleep] is going on here, then?
I took a closer look at the original study, and the researchers did not control for one very important variable: age. I can only speculate based on my own observations of the academic community, having been to a fair number of conferences. My observation has been that black PIs are significantly younger than PIs of other ethnicity. It should come as no surprise that there is lag in the age of black PIs in science because of the way our society is and has been. This is something that will hopefully change. So why do I think youth could very likely be a major a factor in the finding of a lower NIH funding rate for blacks? It is a widely known fact that young PIs on the whole have lower rates of grant funding. My boss, who is, ahem, getting up there in age, has said time and time again that he knows a good number of tricks. As PIs get older, they accrue experience not only writing grants, but also will probably serve on a grant funding committee, where they learn the ins and outs of the process by which grants are funded. This puts younger PIs at a great disadvantage in the funding process.
So, am I qualified to make such speculation? Well, I do work in academia and have for 5 years. I can tell you that the oldest professors I come in contact with are almost all white. The middle aged ones are often mostly white, with significantly more asians and hispanics – but not blacks. I haven’t met many middle aged black professors in the science fields. Of course there are going to be a few old and middle aged black professors in the sciences, but it’s less common. I do, however, know (on a personal level) 2 young black professors in the sciences. So is that concrete evidence that I’m right? Of course it isn’t. But is it a reasonable speculation that warrants a second look before people start raising hell about white favoritism in the NIH (which hasn’t happened yet as far as I’ve read, but I’m betting it will)? Certainly. I may even write a suggestion to the researchers to backtrack and add age to the equation.
The original article can be found here:
I think this is a great observation and totally valid confounding variable. Write to the editor?