“Textbook case” of disability discrimination in grant applications

Justin Yerbury’s case illustrates the challenges facing researchers with a disability

Originally published at Nature Index, January 2021

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.

A professor in neurodegenerative disorders at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, Yerbury has motor neurone disease (MND). The condition means he has lost voluntary control of his muscles. He requires daily support from a team of carers, and his breathing is assisted by a mechanical ventilator. Unable to speak or type, he communicates using a device that tracks his eye-movements, and uses an electric wheelchair.

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.”

“This made me mad,” Yerbury wrote in a Twitter thread. “How could someone think that I could physically produce more than what I had done given my disability?”

The application form seen by Nature Index referred to a ‘Relative to Opportunity’ policy listing nine circumstances that reviewers could consider when evaluating research productivity. The list included teaching and other workloads, lab relocation, and carer responsibilities, but made no mention of disabilities or other long-term health conditions that might affect an applicant.

It was, Yerbury argued, a “textbook case” of indirect discrimination — a policy that applied equally to everyone, but disadvantaged those with a disability.

Continue reading at Nature Index