Race & Peer Review

The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis is just one of the latest disgusting examples of the systemic racial bias that has plagued this country for centuries. While our Black/African-American colleagues have to deal with this in their everyday lives, the recent incidents have led the rest of us to do some soul-searching about the part that we play in perpetuating this bias, either by our actions or by our failure to act. Here at the Center for Scientific Review, our mission includes words such as “fair”, “independent” and “free from inappropriate influences”. And bias, in all its many insidious forms, is the very antithesis of fairness. As indicated by several published studies over the last decade, and NIH’s own analyses, there remains a serious and disturbing disparity in NIH R01 award rates between White and Black applicants. Isolating the effect of race in the peer review process is a
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