Murray Dennis L, Morris Douglas, Lavoie Claude, Leavitt Peter R, MacIsaac Hugh, Masson Michael E J, Villard Marc-Andre
Institute of Integrative Conservation Biology, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, K9J 7B8, Canada.
Department of Biology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, P7B 5E1, Canada.
PLoS One. 2016 Jun 3;11(6):e0155876. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0155876. eCollection 2016.
Federal funding for basic scientific research is the cornerstone of societal progress, economy, health and well-being. There is a direct relationship between financial investment in science and a nation's scientific discoveries, making it a priority for governments to distribute public funding appropriately in support of the best science. However, research grant proposal success rate and funding level can be skewed toward certain groups of applicants, and such skew may be driven by systemic bias arising during grant proposal evaluation and scoring. Policies to best redress this problem are not well established. Here, we show that funding success and grant amounts for applications to Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant program (2011-2014) are consistently lower for applicants from small institutions. This pattern persists across applicant experience levels, is consistent among three criteria used to score grant proposals, and therefore is interpreted as representing systemic bias targeting applicants from small institutions. When current funding success rates are projected forward, forecasts reveal that future science funding at small schools in Canada will decline precipitously in the next decade, if skews are left uncorrected. We show that a recently-adopted pilot program to bolster success by lowering standards for select applicants from small institutions will not erase funding skew, nor will several other post-evaluation corrective measures. Rather, to support objective and robust review of grant applications, it is necessary for research councils to address evaluation skew directly, by adopting procedures such as blind review of research proposals and bibliometric assessment of performance. Such measures will be important in restoring confidence in the objectivity and fairness of science funding decisions. Likewise, small institutions can improve their research success by more strongly supporting productive researchers and developing competitive graduate programming opportunities.
联邦政府对基础科学研究的资助是社会进步、经济、健康和福祉的基石。对科学的资金投入与一个国家的科学发现之间存在直接关系，这使得政府将公共资金合理分配以支持最优秀的科学研究成为当务之急。然而，研究资助提案的成功率和资金水平可能会偏向某些申请人群体，这种偏差可能是由资助提案评估和评分过程中产生的系统性偏见所驱动的。解决这一问题的最佳政策尚未明确确立。在此，我们表明，加拿大自然科学与工程研究理事会（NSERC）发现基金项目（2011 - 2014年）的申请中，来自小型机构的申请人获得资助的成功率和资助金额一直较低。这种模式在不同申请人经验水平中都存在，在用于评估资助提案的三个标准中也保持一致，因此被解释为针对小型机构申请人的系统性偏见。当根据当前的资助成功率进行预测时，结果显示，如果偏差得不到纠正，加拿大小型学校未来十年的科学资金将急剧下降。我们表明，最近采用的一项试点计划，即通过降低对小型机构特定申请人的标准来提高成功率，并不会消除资金偏差，其他一些评估后纠正措施也不会。相反，为了支持对资助申请进行客观和有力的评审，研究理事会有必要通过采用诸如对研究提案进行盲审和对绩效进行文献计量评估等程序，直接解决评估偏差问题。这些措施对于恢复对科学资金决策的客观性和公平性的信心至关重要。同样，小型机构可以通过更有力地支持有生产力的研究人员和开发有竞争力的研究生项目机会来提高其研究成功率。
