As we have learned over the course of this semester, scientific research should be unbiased and objective. At the same time, scientific research is expensive
and is becoming more costly all the time. This means that many scientific studies cannot be carried out without at least one source of outside funding to pay
for subjects, materials, research assistants, and so on, which means that researchers must continually search for open grants and submit many long and
complex proposals in a quest to get the monies needed to carry out research. The dependency on money for research means that we must be concerned
about possible sources of bias as a result of who funds a study, as well as how the method proposed for a study, or how even the gender or age of the
applicant might affect the chances of getting a grant. For example, to what extent does industry rather than government sponsorship mean that the findings
might favor the interests of the granting organization? If this happens, we refer to it as funding or sponsorship bias. An example of this might be a drug
company that pressures a researcher to minimize adverse effects of a drug or make the claim that it works better than it really does. This can be harmful to
public interests and to the scientific community who might use that faulty study as part of their literature review or to guide a new study.
Another important question concerns the decision-making process of awarding a grant. Grants are typically awarded via a peer-review process (like that used
by journals when researchers submit articles). We must consider the extent to which certain methodologies are favored or censored because this could
affect what we think we know. To what extent do peer reviewers favor quantitative research over qualitative? To what extent does gender affect who gets a
grant? To what extent does the age of the applicant affect who gets a grant? Theoretically, the method, the gender, or age of an applicant should not have a…
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