Thread by @drugmonkeyblog

We do need to talk just a little bit about Snidely Whiplash in the context of NIH grant award disparity and the thinking of our white colleagues who are gradually realizing just how they are a part of white supremacy this week.

The Gither and Hoppe findings seem new to at least some of you so I'm going to tread what is old ground for others of you.

The initial reaction to Ginther was hot denial.

From the NIH, which continues to pursue denial *that they are in any way responsible* for any disparate grant awards to white over Black applicants. Yes. That's how they deployed Hoppe. That's how they deployed the follow-up Ginther et al 2018 pmlegacy.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30427864

But more importantly, Ginther 2011 engender HOT DENIAL from a huge majority of scientists, most especially those with study section reviewing experience.

"oh, what about this?" "oh, what about that?"

They raised factor after factor that was supposed to "explain" the disparity

The vast majority of these were considered in the original paper although you had to look at the Supplement to find them. Guess what? basically no matter how you sliced it and parsed it....the disadvantage of Black PIs remained.

My peers, especially white ones, did not budge

Now yes, this is annoying to those of us that 1) actually read Ginther and 2) were willing to believe there was disparity because of course this is a human judgment and those are subject to bias.

But the HOT DENIAL of Ginther was in large part the old way of thinking about racism and racial injustice. The old way that is just barely, haltingly, being moderated by our present discussion on the almost subterranean influences of *systemic* racism and discrimination.

The old way is that racism is exclusively the province of specific bad actor villains. Snidely Whiplash characters, rubbing their hands, twirling their mustache and plotting overtly to score down those applications from Black PIs and reserving good scores for majoritarian PIs.

*They* were not Snidely! Quite the contrary, they have black er... well that one colleague they nod to at meetings. They have NEVER seen any Snidely reviewers at their study sections, why of COURSE they would shout that down if they ever had.

Our panel is not racist!

Of course your panel is not racist in the sense of tolerating explicitly racist reviewers who express their opinions on an application in un-equivocable bigoted terms.

This week, I hope, is another small ratchet forward in the understanding of why that is wrong headed.

Many of you know this and I keep trying to express it in many contexts, not just Ginther.

NIH Grant review is an inherently conservative process.

Those who get to do the reviewing have been selected by, or shaped by, the NIH review process as it is.

This means that they then review grants in the way that everyone has always reviewed NIH grants.

With all of the same biases. With all of the same priorities and blind spots.

on average.

For those that don't know, most reviewers of grants have to have already been awarded a grant of ~that type (size) to be allowed to review. Often times one has to be deep enough in the career to have had several successes as an applicant PI.

To do that, one has to have written a grant proposal that accords with the merit opinions of the existing panel.

It is a recipe for reinforcing the same and punishing the different.

Often times this is really parochial. Those individuals who have received a fundable score from Panel FWDA are often invited to come and review for Panel FWDA in the future. So even sub-topic domains have a further conservative cycle to them.

This is amplified by recognition. SROs, NIH officers who organize the review panels, select scientists they can find. How? Well they ask around with their current reviewers and their applicants and maybe PubMed some key words.

Professors with a high profile, for various reasons including training pedigree, are more likely to be asked to review grants. Those with lower profile are not.

Those who have enjoyed NIH funding publish more, go to more meetings, enjoy greater recognition.

Do you appreciate how this drives the *systemic* racism that is revealed in Ginther and Hoppe with respect to NIH grant award success?

Grants lead to papers. Papers lead to recognition. Recognition leads to power. To decide what grants get funded. Rinse and repeat.

The NIH is a fairly large enterprise and this does not happen at the hands of one or even several Snidely Whiplash villains.

This is why "implicit bias training" solutions will do little good. They are directed at Snidely. Snidely's unconscious, sure, but at Snidely in your implicit closet nevertheless.

He is not the problem. Or, he's not the majority of the problem.

We cannot fix this problem just by putting one or two more African-American investigators on a panel or two.

First of all, see the above with respect to the shaping process.

Black professors who get on panels in my experience are....successful members of the majority culture

I have no idea how they feel in their heart of hearts about it, but if you are a African-American scientist who NIH recruits on the regular to review grants, you have been shaped and/or selected by the system to be at least moderately within that system.

So right there we have a thumb on the scale. I'm not going to say that is good or bad, just that it is there.

Second, one or two or three people are not enough to significantly alter what grants do and do not get funded.

Sure, we constantly hear whinging from reviewers about how Dr. So and So has a disproportionate effect on grants in their section and they wish he would shut tf up once in awhile.
But the panel votes. The panel listens to the assigned reviewers and judges their credibility

but the reviewers on the panel do NOT know whether Professor Big Mouth has actually skewed the vote. The final votes are confidential.

Remember yesterday when I pointed out that Hoppe reports 2.7% of applicants are African-American? And that slightly fewer applications come in, per person? How many applications does the average study section even see from an African-American PI each round? 1? 2?

With all the variation in the other parts of the applications there is simply no basis whatsoever to conclude that anyone is savaging a particular grant just because it has an African-American PI.

The problem is SYSTEMIC. It is not about Snidely Whiplash.

It is literally impossible for anyone to say "well that particular application merited a few points higher, this is proof of the disparity".

It doesn't work this acutely.

So. What are you going to DO?

I've basically just told you that you can do nothing right?

Maybe if I was just talking to one of you. But I'm not, I'm talking to a lot of you and you are free to talk to a lot of other people.

If we want to do something about the *cycle*, it is going to take a lot of people on the same mission.

So I repeat my self.

What are YOU. going to DO?

I keep asking.

It is not rhetorical.

I don't know if you think I am going to give you some pat answer at the end of the lecture.

Some of you know that the lecture has been going on for just over 13 years.

I am pretty good at leading the horsies to water.

I still do not believe it is possible to make the horsies drink the water.

You have to do that for yourself.

What are YOU, my very well-intentioned and very sincerely and deeply distressed about the racial disparities in law enforcement and every other aspect of our society in this particular week and very not-African-American colleagues and friends, going to DO about it?