Evidence of gender bias found in peer review

There appear to be systematic biases in peer review that penalise women applying for research grants, according to a new analysis by researchers at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and McGill University in Montreal. The team suggests that policy changes, training and monitoring could help to address the problem.

‘Among people with equivalent funding success rates, men will achieve higher scores than women, and if you are a basic scientist you will see a higher score than applied scientists,’ states Robyn Tamblyn, the scientific director of CIHR’s Institute of Health Services and Policy Research and a senior scientist at the McGill University Health Centre.