I had a thought about Ginther just after hearing a radio piece on the Asian-Americans that are suing Harvard over entrance discrimination.
The charge is that Asian-American students need to have better grades and scores than white students to receive an admissions bid.
The discussion of the Ginther study revolved around the finding that African-American applicant PIs were less likely than PIs of other groups to receive NIH grant funding. This is because Asian-Americans, for example, did as well as white PIs. Our default stance, I assume, is that being a white PI is the best that it gets. So if another group does as well, this is evidence of a lack of bias.
But what if Asian-American PIs submit higher quality applications as a group?
How would we ever know if there was discrimination against them in NIH grant award?
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