Postdocs get more equipment time when applications are anonymized

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A researcher uses the 'Dingo' neutron imaging instrument at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering. The facility was involved in an experiment where applications for equipment time did not contain names or affiliations. Credit: ANSTO

More postdoctoral researchers secured access to sophisticated scientific instruments when an Australian facility made their application process anonymous1.

The results of the intervention, reported in Research Evaluation this month, are the latest example of how introducing blind review, in which the identities of the applicants are not revealed, can reduce systemic biases.

Blind review shifts the scrutiny away from the scientist to the science, says Priyamvada Natarajan, a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who was involved in a similar effort at NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. “If the idea is original and brilliant, it shouldn’t matter who wrote it,” she says. “Everyone should have a fair shot.”

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