ArticleeLife2021
An experimental test of the effects of redacting grant applicant identifiers on peer review outcomes.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
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- The Role of the National Institute of Mental Health in Promoting Diversity in the Psychiatric Research Workforce.The Psychiatric clinics of North America · 2022Review
- Strategies for inclusive grantmaking.Nature medicine · 2022Article
- Peer reviewers' dilemmas: a qualitative exploration of decisional conflict in the evaluation of grant applications in the medical humanities and social sciences.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2022Article
- Can Peer Review Be Kinder? Supportive Peer Review: A Re-Commitment to Kindness and a Call to Action.Canadian journal of kidney health and disease · 2022Article
- Reflections on race, ethnicity, and NIH research awards.Molecular biology of the cell · 2022Article
- Blinding peer review.eLife · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Blinding reviewers to applicant identity has been proposed to reduce bias in peer review. Methods: This experimental test used 1200 NIH grant applications, 400 from Black investigators, 400 matched applications from White investigators, and 400 randomly selected applications from White investigators. Applications were reviewed by mail in standard and redacted formats. Results: Redaction reduced, but did not eliminate, reviewers' ability to correctly guess features of identity. The primary, preregistered analysis hypothesized a differential effect of redaction according to investigator race in the matched applications. A set of secondary analyses (not preregistered) used the randomly selected applications from White scientists and tested the same interaction. Both analyses revealed similar effects: Standard format applications from White investigators scored better than those from Black investigators. Redaction cut the size of the difference by about half (e.g. from a Cohen's Conclusions: Grant-writing considerations and halo effects are discussed as competing explanations for this pattern. The findings support further evaluation of peer review models that diminish the influence of applicant identity. Funding: Funding was provided by the NIH.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.