"Gender Bias in NIH Grant Review: Does it Exist and Does it Matter?"

There has been longstanding policy concern about the lack of women and minorities in the upper tiers of the biomedical sciences. This report examines whether female and minority applicants are treated differently in NIH peer review. Analyzing scores assigned to over 55,000 R01 research grants, I find that female investigators face greater hurdles. A female PI receives, on average, a half percentile worse score than comparable men for research that eventually produces the same number of publications and citations. Gender bias reduces the number of women who are funded by approximately 3 percent. These biases, however, do not substantively affect the quality of the research that NIH supports; the portfolio of projects that the NIH would fund in the absence of gender or ethnicity considerations produces no more publications or citations. Analysis of study section composition reveals that the presence of female reviewers attenuates bias, suggesting that while bias does exist, demographic balance on study sections can improve peer review.