NIH Director empanels working group on diversity
August 24, 2011
The initial response to the dismal news about black-white disparity in grant scores and funding is…create an advisory panel.
I have seen this reaction before and indeed served on such panels at the local institutional level.
I am not hopeful.
They have a boatload of people listed on the roster already. Going by the stats on the number of African-American PIs, this panel could easily interview each and every one of them. And make a damn good start on all the unsuccessful ones too.
I suggest they start there.
Rather than the usual hot air that never goes anywhere…
DrugMonkey 
August 24, 2011 at 4:40 am
No one should be terribly surprised. “Appoint a committee to look into it” is the standard institutional non-response response to these things.
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August 24, 2011 at 7:40 am
I agree that the standard, “We’ve appointed a committee to look into this problem.” seems ill-fated. (Hey, at least they’re not calling it a “Blue-Ribbon” panel.) However, I’m honestly interested in how a hypothetical NIH Director DrugMonkey would handle the situation. Will you address that in an upcoming blog post?
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August 24, 2011 at 8:40 am
NIH Director
empanelsimpales working group on diversityFTFY
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August 28, 2011 at 5:26 am
Apparently the NSF does a better job?
http://jbashir.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/nsf-vs-nih-in-grant-racial-disparities/
Disparity is still there and very consistent across years, but only a few percentage points.
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January 11, 2012 at 7:55 am
[…] offered solutions before, after expressing skepticism about the Advisory Panel […]
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February 5, 2013 at 11:08 am
[…] been published that purports to refute the conclusion of the Ginther report (also see this, this, this, this) that there exists substantial bias in the awarding of NIH grants to white versus black […]
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November 19, 2013 at 10:14 am
Hi there, I log on to your new stuff regularly. Your writing style is
witty, keep doing what you’re doing!
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