Dumping peer review academy would cut red tape

The allocation of National Health and Medical Research Council grants is “too heavily influenced” by the assessments of a small number of reviewers, according to one of Australia’s biggest research lobby groups.

The Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes has told a federal inquiry that using a “sophisticated algorithm” to sort grant applications would cut bureaucracy and create a fairer system.

The AAMRI criticism follows the preliminary results of a study led by University Technology Sydney academic Deb Verhoeven. It showed that 84 per cent of men who received NHMRC grants in 2016 had worked in male-only research teams for around 16 years.