US National Science Foundation data collected between 1996 and 2019 show that white principal investigators were more likely to receive grant funding than their nonwhite colleagues, suggesting that “Systemic racism manifests at the NSF as higher funding rates for proposals by White PIs than those by non-White PIs,” a preprint posted this month argues.
NSF, which received a copy of the analysis, which has not been peer reviewed, does not dispute its conclusions, reports Science. The agency’s director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, “shares these concerns [about] systemic racial disparities in funding at NSF and other federal agencies,” an NSF spokesperson tells the outlet, adding that while the agency is proud of its programs aimed at improving equity and inclusion, “there is still much [work] to do.”
Study coauthor Christine Yifeng Chen, a geochemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, tells Science that she and her colleagues decided to investigate trends in NSF funding ...
