Thread by @drugmonkeyblog

So now we’ve arrived : ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

This is the systemic racism you have known about *in your profession* since 2011, my dear white handwringing friends. The systemic racism that you benefit from. Professionally and therefore financially. Wealth buildingly.

You are not stupid. You know how the award or lack thereof of a grant at any time affects a career.

You have just admitted in several ways yesterday that you understand these are entirely subjective choices about what to fund.

Hoppe showed something about priorities.

I.e. research topics that are of particular interest to tax-paying communities of color are systematically discriminated against- even if the PI is white. It’s just extra bad if the PI is black. So it is well beyond the problem of who, it is also the “what” gets studied.

Hoppe also showed us that 2.7% of *applicants* to the NIH (fy2011-2015 data but low single digits is a constant) are African-American. (And that white applicants submit 20% more proposals per capita)

It’s a drop in the bucket.

You know what isn’t a drop in the bucket? White “early stage investigator” proposal numbers. White woman PI proposal numbers. White emeritizing “our long term funded friend” proposal numbers. White “friend of the IC Director” PI proposal numbers.

Some tweep observed yesterday that Emory University, in *Atlanta*, has dismal numbers of African-American faculty. There was some crack about how if you can’t recruit to Atlanta....

Yeah.

Emory has a lot of NIH grants.

The conversation this week has been trying to acknowledge the extra labor that faculty of color put in, on average, in DealingWithThisShit for students, trainees and even holding the wringing hands of their VeryDistressed white colleagues about ....this.

You know what else is extra labor? Ginther 2011 showed very clearly that for Black PIs to get funded requires more *work*. More submissions, more revisions. No biggie, right?

Right.

Just like having to pay a higher mortgage is no biggie. Hey, they got the loan, all good.

The invisible and the insidious factors of the systemic aspects of racism are burbling up to conscious understanding. Don’t get me wrong, this is really productive for the decades long arc of this American story.

It is time to connect more dots.

Within your profession, my very well intentioned and currently sincerely hand wringing white colleagues, you are not just the passive beneficiaries of, but in fact the acute practitioners of white supremacy.

What are you going to DO?

You are so proud of yourself for arguing with your dad or uncle or neighbor about cop killings. You’ve even defended rioters! Go you!

Have you gone toe to toe with even one senior colleague in your field or department about the Ginther finding?

You’ve called your Rep. you’ve written your Senator. Pleading for them to rein in these killer cops.

Yay.

When’s the last time you called @NIHDirector or your favorite IC director like @NIMHDirector to account for doing nothing about grant funding disparities?

Will George or Nora or David or Josh stop and chat with you for a few minutes in a hallway or elevator, should we ever start Meeting again, fellow scientists? What will you DO with that considerable power that you embody?

Are you buddies with NIH SROs? Are you appointed on a study section? Are you regularly called to ad hoc on study sections? Are you buddies with people who regularly serve on study sections?

What will you DO?

Oh, back to the Hoppe study for a sec. Applications from African-American PIs are significantly more likely to be triaged (not discussed, not scored) than are applications from white PIs. ND is a significant bar. For one thing, Program has a lot harder time pulling it up to fund

It is nebulous, but there is some thinking that a revision of a ND application has a lot harder chance to make it to funding versus even a 49%ile that is scored. I really don't have data on this but it's a thing. YMMV.

The impact of triage/ND is so important that study sections / CSR have adopted rules that "the burden of triage not fall disproportionally on X". X is most notably Early Stage Investigators and the non-R01 mechanism applications.

So far as I am aware there is no @CSRpeerreview rule that the burden of triage should not fall disproportionally on the applications from African-American investigators EVEN though Hoppe just showed us (and actually this was in Ginther 2011 iirc) that it indeed DOES.

Since we're looking at the first Figure in Hoppe, good time to just marvel at the "% funded overall" numbers. White applicants enjoy a 17.7% success rate. African-American applicants: 10.7%. Maybe you could just roll that around in your head, my NIH grant-seeking white PI friends

Imagine you have just recruited a new African-American investigator to your department. She is looking at a 10.7% hit rate while the white guy you hired last year is expected to hit at a 17.7% rate. these extra grants, just to have a fair shot at funding, do not write themselves

The cycle of NIH submission and review doesn't just all happen at once. It takes TIME for anyone without a grant to get one. It takes resources. It takes money.

Has your department given this new recruit 2-3 times the startup runway JUST for this factor alone?

runway in terms of cash, productivity expectations and suspension of other competing duties?

Or is your Department expecting them to succeed on the same exact timeline, despite the 10.7% versus 17.7% success rate at the NIH?

I say just for this factor alone because there are OTHER factors that question whether you are enacting and/or benefiting from white supremacy and whether you are committed to DO something about inequity.

Does your Department or University conduct competitive recruitment?

That's rhetorical. Of course it does. Many, many, many faculty recruitments are competitive. We must snare PromisingYoungGunne away from that Yale offer! What will it take?

"We must hire Professor MoneyBagges away from UW! Look at how she will enhance our Department (and bring in lots of grant funding)....."

What does it take?

Cash.

As I mentioned, yesterday witnessed a little tweetscussion about just how few African-American Professors there are in prominent med schools and overall in Universities. Particularly in STEM and even more particularly biomedical fields aka NIH type people.

One might view any protestations that such Universities (and lets face it, that means you my very well intentioned and currently hand wringing white colleagues) make about diversity as an issue of competitive priorities in an environment of scarcity.

When the scarce target is within a certain domain, the sky is the limit. Salaries, appointment types, startup packages, cash money for "housing allowances", spousal accommodation hires, lab rennovations....

You know what I'm talking about.

Totally normal and accepted work a day practices of University hires for Professors.

FOR CERTAIN GOALS.

and make no mistake. We overlook all kinds of stuff about them. Could have a background of sexual harassment complaints....no problem. Could be a total jerk----no problem. May have never placed a trainee in faculty but dang those science papers.....no problem.

Because we are focused on one or two characteristics of the entire package and rolling out the red carpet, opening our wallet, for those characteristics.

I have never once seen or heard any department back their supposed goal of increasing diversity in this manner.

Not in graduate student admissions.

Not in new faculty hires.

Not in senior faculty hiring.

This is an active failure to DO anything meaningful to address the disparities of opportunity under which people of color in academia labor.

You are now, my dear white friends and colleagues, fighting desperately with your

"...but....but....it wouldn't be FAIR...."

voice.

Oh are you concerned about fairness now?

Really?

When it looks like it might pinch YOU?

Are you starting to see the problem? and why it is you?

Academics is zero sum. Sorry. Maybe not at the trainee level. Graduate programs can be expanded by a couple or three individuals. The world is more or less ready to come up with additional cash money to support African-American graduate students. Cash that wouldn't go to white

trainees. And there are the NIH Administrative supplements that can support grad students, post-docs and even jr faculty. Money that is not accessible to white individuals. So that's extra.

But the real stuff is not elastic.

Ok, maybe there are some Dean's hire situations. Various top-down incentives from a University for a Department to hire an African-American faculty member. maybe the "line" wouldn't exist. Maybe the Dean swears to pay whatever costs the Dept might otherwise bear.

but usually......there is an aspect of zero sum. Depts rightfully worry about the "deal" being forgotten in ten years and two Deans later. They have to find space. They eventually have to pay something. It's never really free. There's an opportunity cost in hiring

African-American faculty. You are trading one for the other. Grants are no different. The NIH doesn't provide research grant moneys to individual categories of investigators that would not be, given fungibility, in some way available to someone else. There is a cost.

To lay out resources for one faculty member, for whatever reasons of competitive prioirty, means that they are not available to someone else. Not available for someone else's priorities. Someone takes the hit.

For diversity. For opportunity. For fairness (to some).

This may not be the reparations discussion but it is damn close.

we all know how that makes even very well intentioned white folk feel.

I can smell your cognitive barriers being erected through the intertubes, my very well intentioned and frustrated-with-all-this colleagues

Brief Interlude: One of the most hilarious vignettes of my career was a senior dude, very successful in the grant game over a long time saying to me

"Gee DM, you always know so much about all this NIH stuff!"

It was expressed pretty nicely. But it was in the same vein as recent suggestions that we academics should not seek recognition. Same vein as somewhat older remarks from certain parties that grant seeking discussion are gauche. That "grants are not the point, they are the means"

as if the reason I pay attention and learn about how NIH funding works is that I just want to amass a shitload of grants for score keeping reasons. And that I tell people what I know on the internets because I want them to play this game of sportsball.

It never seems to occur to these people how convenient it is that they can ignore this stuff.

It never seems to occur to these people that I HAVE to advantage myself with NIH knowledge if I plan to merely survive in this racket.

It never seems to occur to these people that, despite what they assume, I don't enjoy the benefits of proactive concrete career funding support that certain others do.

One of the most productive thing you can take away from this is how you view your colleagues.

The brand new ones, especially. HELP them.

Me, have what opinion you like.

But there are a lot of African-American investigators in my field that are NOT dicks on the internet, pissing you off with the opinions they have the temerity to hold.

Think about why their careers have gone down as they have. Review them on RePORTER...and think about where maybe a bad grant review or three did damage.

unrecoverable damage.

Careers are wealth building.

Apply your newfound woke understanding about how the Tulsa riots stole generational wealth. Apply your newfound woke understanding of the generational effects of red-line housing wealth theft.

Think "huh, I wonder what happened to that investigator's research program?"

When did that NBD straw identified in Hoppe 2019 and Ginther 2011 break the metaphorical camel's back?

When did the upside benefit of not facing that disparity in grant outcome keep a similarly talented white investigator rolling? Or a less talented one?

Looping in

https://twitter.com/HCCvPDAC/status/1267883985465757709

Relevant to this, we saw in the @CSRpeerreview (that's the part of NIH that oversees grant review) Advisory council meeting from Sept 19 a person saying basically "if PIs haven't been able to get funded after a long period of trying, they don't deserve to ever get funded".

Most tellingly, there was zero pushback from around the table. Nobody said anything about how ridiculous that was. And for sure nobody said anything about Ginther and how discriminatory this might be if some threshold X didn't take into account the funding bias against some PIs

These are the people overseeing broad strategy in how CSR/NIH reviews grants (and therefore what gets funded, make no mistake). These are the people munging around with little studies designed to nibble around the edges of reform and make things look good, no matter the impact.

These are our senior, well respected peers. Active scientists. And believe you me, if she expressed that, there are many, many, MANY senior scientists sitting in normal peer review study sections who harbor, implicitly or explicitly, that same bias about who "deserves" a grant.

Don't even get me started about the sort of attitude I've touched on upthread that lets little thoughts about too many applications, too many grants, too young, too much $, blah blah too damn *uppity* contaminate their review. Those 'tudes interact with racial bias.

The simplest thing. Let us return to the root cause of all the civil protest and the cop counter-protest rioting we are seeing this past week. The forces of systemic racism could have prevented a lot of this carnage by the simplest thing.

Arresting and perp-walking the four cops that killed George Floyd.

That's all it would have taken to keep things within bounds.

Sure, they might have gotten off and later there might have been more unrest.

But in this moment, all that Minneapolis and the great state of Minnesota had to do was show that the rule of law applies to cops too.

The simplest. tiny. little. step.

we can talk later about how dismal that is.

but it's true.

Well, the grant funding disparity at the NIH that was identified in Ginther 2011 also has a simple tiny fix.

Remember how African-American PI applications are fewer than 3% of the total? And how the success rates even for white PIs is below 20% anyway?

The NIH could make the *funding disparity* go away by picking up a mere handful of grants. We're talking one or two per institute or center per year.

As I often snark, this is NIH rounding error. They fund this many grants by total accident, I bet.

There are ways they could do this with nobody the wiser.

(Where nobody = strongly anti-affirmative action right-wing political forces, especially in Congress.)

The NIH and @NIHDirector specifically, absolutely REFUSES to do what it would take to make this go away. Now, it wouldn't actually address the review bias. And everything would not be rosy. But it would address the bias.

Signaling that the NIH actually cares about this.

Instead of signaling that in fact the NIH agrees that African-American applicants should indeed be disadvantaged.

As should their research interests.

Including those most important to tax paying communities of color.

The maternal health disparities we heard about from Serena Williams (queen).

The sudden cardiac arrest in middle age African-American males that @UTDPainLab was just discussing so painfully and personally.

Strategies tobacco companies have used to addict Black Americans

(strategies that, BTW, have been EXPLICTLY EXCEPTED from FDA's newfound courage to regulate the tobacco industry, you may ask yourself why that is)

These topics go on an on and on.

I am for sure not saying we should only fix funding disparity for African-American PIs who propose the right topics. That will just come along for the ride. Statistically.

African-Americans pay their taxes and the NIH should rightfully address their health concerns.

Just like #SABV concerns.

I have to go do a thing for awhile. Tawk amongst yourselves.

When I get time we’ll do the “pipeline” thing for all you newcomers (welcome), the Asian-American implications of Ginther, probably some shit about my passing privilege and CSR frittering about “integrity of review”

First, we need to talk about crimes. The crimes of the victims of police shootings. Like Michael Brown who supposedly shoplifted some cigarillos. Like George Floyd and the alleged fake $20. Wait no. More importantly the allegations that he was drug intoxicated.

I have my little issues with the whole victim smearing tactic but I’m going to put this on you today, my grant seeking friends. A day or so ago, I got quite a number of you to indicate you’ve known adult shoplifters.

Our once co-blogger had something to say in the wake of Ferguson that is relevant to this. You are a bunch of criminals - sundappledforest.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/you…
sundappledforest.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/you…

But for *some* reason, despite your habitual speeding on the freeway and all..... you STILL have a leetle tiny voice thinking “well maybe he deserved it, he was no angel”. We are definitely making progress. But you know that “potential intoxicants” have you a little pause.

The point we are all variably realizing, my comfortable suburban upper middle class academic friends, is that certain people are brutalized and even killed by the cops for acts we think we are positively *allowed* to do. Like speed. And not turn signal. Smoke a little weed

when and if we lived in a jurisdiction where it isn’t legal. Drunk and even a little disorderly in public.

I don’t see any hands objecting.

I’m not actually interested in your criminal habits.

The point is what sort of scientist you are. Most of you are, or will be, average. Somewhere in the vast middle. Good on some measures , not so good on other measures. The normal distribution very likely describes us.

If we *are* in the middle, let’s say within the interquartile range, we still feel entitled to a career, right? Entitled to some grant funding? After all, look at all those average scientists we can point to who have [insert x amount, Y duration] of NIH support!

Those African-American PIs that are the subject of Ginther, though. Maybe they just aren’t as good? Wasn’t their a follow up showing that? (Yes) And definitely Hoppe - I mean that’s exactly what @NIHDirector said- they need to up their game and do science the “right “ way.

I'm not going to punch you too hard on this. Most of you are going to try to pretend to yourselves that of course you are woke to the bullshit victim blaming based on petty crimes. Of course you recognize that if ol Professor McDrinky takes a pee at a meeting bar

and the bartender thinks he's shining on the bill, calls security and he gets choked to death you would of course go "well maybe he had it coming" aahahaha O god of course that would never happen.

That is exactly what is happening to black men at the hands of cops. Death for minor crimes (or no crime at all, just a mistaken interpretation).

But I don't have to make you face your demons, my very frustrated with AllThis well intentioned white colleagues of science

Because this was the official (and only) NIH response to the funding disparity described in Ginther. Belt up, my newcomer friends.

There was a response. It was a "pipeline" response. *Trainees* were funded. mostly in majoritarian labs to do majoritarian "

“We need to understand ... whether the methodologies used in those fields of research need an upgrade.” - @NIHDirector said about Hoppe. nih.gov/news-events/ne…

this is emblematic of the whole approach of NIH. There's something wrong with the victims. They deserve their fate. They aren't good enough. If they only "upgrade" their "methodologies" then all would be well. So let's train a bunch of new scientists properly.

They probably shot out a couple of large training grants or block grants of some sort to a couple of historically black unis. I think I remember that.

What they most assuredly did not do is fix the problems for the actual victims from whom the data were drawn.

We are 9 years and soon to be 18 NIH funding cycles past Ginther. the disparity remains whenever they are honest enough to cough up more data from the system.

Pipeline solutions don't fix this, necessarily. Pipeline solutions definitely put more labor into the majoritarian labs

I'm going to get a little shouty if I dwell on how disturbing that particular part of the NIH response is, so moving on.

Just ask yourself whether this uneven pipeline filling solution is likely to address the problem of what research gets conducted by whom.

It's indirect.

and disturbingly about getting the "right" Black investigators into the system.

Because we have the wronguns, apparently

Who deserve the funding disparity.

I dunno. Think about your average ass as a scientist. Think about the polling we had yesterday where everyone admitted that most average ass proposals could be substituted for each other with no loss in "merit" whatever that is.

Think about why there is still a leeetle tiny voice in your head that thinks that maybe the Black investigators and citizens-killed-by-cop deserved their fate, but your average ass scientist self / your criminal self deserves a grant and not to be choked out by the police.

Think about whether the NIH "pipeline"trainee solution is basically the same as if the local metro PD offered to train a new class of black officers. that's gonna fix the problem, right?

Why do African-American scientists have to be in like the top 10% just to get the field to recognize that they belong.....when there are plenty of 50th percentile white folks who of COURSE deserve to be in the game?

What is "fair"?

let's return to Ginther and remind ourselves that there was another suspect class at a huge disadvantage. Asian and Asian-American PIs. The ones that received their doctorates at a non-US institution, that is.

shows a bias. which also hasn't been addressed. as far as I know.

the @CSRpeerreview sure has been making a lot of noise about the "integrity of peer review" that we now know is directed in large part at Chinese and Chinese-American scientists.

The NIH is being VERY coy about exactly witaf is going on but they disbanded at least two study sections. Now that smells a lot worse than study section members showing someone who shouldn't be seeing them, the grants that are submitted.

It sure smells like they rooted out a review cartel. Some sort of agreement among a group of people to favorably review some grants and disfavorably review other grants.

GAAAAASSSSP. clutch the pearls, my white scientist friends.

Here's a hint. There are review cartels all over the NIH.

From a certain point of view.

The advantage of white applicants over black applicants is proof of one of them.

From a certain point of view.

"That study section only ever funds......" is a review cartel.

From a certain point of view.

"Those MRI folks fight tooth and nail for their type of grants" is a review cartel

From a certain point of view.

We are brought in by NIH / @CSRpeerreview to express our scientific biases about what is Significant.

we are. explicitly so. One of the 5 key review criteria.

And the lack of clear instruction on what is Innovative, a good Investigator team, a good Environment

and a good Approach makes those subject to the individual scientific biases as well.

get enough like minded people on a panel...boom, a review cartel.

I don't know what CSR is talking about with their "integrity of review" business but I sure would like to get them to fess up to what they mean. and how much leakage they have observed. and whether they've turned the bright spotlight on each and every panel.

My questions about what are you going to DO, my friends, are not rhetorical.

Decent people want to uphold the law. Decent people want a fair system. Decent people think that fair for one (Black applicants, Asian-American with foreign PHD applicants) is fairer for all.

Decent people want to think all of us in the US get a fair start, fair opportunity and if we can't take advantage, maybe that is on us.

Decent people have a really, REALLY hard time imagining that the minor difficulties they face in life aren't basically the same as everyone's

The current unrest is helping to break that down for folks.

Our growing appreciation of generational wealth building and screwjobs is commendable.

We are struggling to understand that the indecent people continue to make everything shitty because they don't use the rules

Sure does work out for themselves though, doesn't it?

I return to these review cartels that were apparently busted by CSR. They are overtly indecent actors. I assume there was really sound evidence of collusion.

I assume that because I've seen some very explicit emails offering quid pro quo and threatening a junior faculty member with retaliation if they didn't do a grant a solid.

If that dude was willing to put it in an email- it wasn't the first time. and he knows other folks

that act the same way. as a cartel.

and the NIH is big enough that there is no way there is just one of these dudes.

Relatedly I've heard people who really should know better ranting about how they will revenge themselves upon someone they just KNOW sabotaged their grant. I have had a friend earnestly and insistently tell me to watch my mouth on study section-obviously similar

threats had been directed at me by some angry boomer or what not.

What, my very dear and earnest white colleagues

ARE. YOU. GOING. TO. DO??????111????