Justin Yerbury’s appeal prompts Australia’s NHMRC to revise its policy.
In May 2020, when Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) announced the results of its annual Investigator Grant funding round, Justin Yerbury was among the 87% of applicants who missed out.
Apart from its intrinsic interest, it is relevant to PPI initiatives that draw in people with disabilities as partners. If we can’t avoid discriminating against high achieving researchers with disabilities, how can we avoid either such discrimination or tokenism in PPI?
The feedback on his grant application showed that he had narrowly missed the cut, primarily because assessors were underwhelmed by his record of publications. “The track record was promising”, one assessor wrote. “However, relative to opportunity, I was looking for more first- and last-author publications.”
Read the rest of this discussion piece
