A groundbreaking study of 100,000 grant applicants provides the strongest evidence to date that a single early-career funding award can dramatically shape a scientist's entire career, creating a cycle of cumulative advantage that has profound implications for innovation and equity in research.

A new report published in Nature confirms what many in the scientific community have long suspected: success breeds success. 1 By analysing the career trajectories of 100,000 researchers, the largest study of its kind has quantified the "Matthew effect," a phenomenon where those who start with an advantage accumulate more resources and recognition over time.

The findings are stark. A quasi-experimental study in the Netherlands revealed that researchers who narrowly won an early-career grant accumulated more than twice as much funding over the next eight years compared to their peers who narrowly lost, despite having nearly identical qualifications. This initial leg up translated into an emergent funding gap of approximately €180,000 and increased a winner's long-term probability of securing a full professorship by 47%.  

This dynamic is exacerbated by a hyper-competitive funding landscape. With success rates for some major grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) dipping as low as 14%, any prior success becomes a powerful signal for review panels tasked with differentiating among a large pool of excellent applications.  

Advocating New Approach

"When quality is tough to measure objectively, reputation often takes its place," one commentator noted, highlighting how the peer-review process itself can become an engine of stratification. Studies show that reviewers, often unconsciously, are influenced by an applicant's reputation, institutional prestige, gender, and race. An experiment by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation found that when they blinded reviewers to applicants' identities and institutions, the success rate for proposals from less-prestigious universities increased significantly.  

The consequences of this funding concentration extend beyond individual careers, affecting the entire scientific enterprise. The system creates a "pivot penalty," discouraging even established researchers from pursuing novel, high-risk ideas outside their proven domains. This fosters intellectual conservatism and can stifle the very innovation needed for transformative breakthroughs.  

Furthermore, the cycle of advantage perpetuates a lack of diversity. By systematically favoring a narrow demographic and institutional pool, the system limits the variety of perspectives essential for scientific excellence and for addressing societal challenges like health disparities.  

The problem is also compounded by a "participation gap." Researchers who narrowly miss out on early funding are significantly less likely to apply for future grants, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where the system's initial rejection is validated by their withdrawal from the competition.  

However, the report also highlights that this is not an inevitable law of nature. Alternative funding ecosystems, such as scientific crowdfunding, show opposite results, with junior investigators and women having higher success rates than their senior male counterparts. This suggests that the Matthew effect is a product of the system's rules, not a universal constant.  

Systematic Reforms

Experts are now calling for systemic reforms to create a more equitable and effective funding system. Proposed solutions include:

• Dual-Anonymous Peer Review: Hiding the identity of both the applicant and the reviewer, a practice that has already reduced gender bias in allocating time on the Hubble Space Telescope.  

• Partial Lotteries: For high-quality proposals that are difficult to rank precisely, a lottery system could give all meritorious ideas a fair chance.  

• Rebalancing Funding Portfolios: Shifting funds from a few very large grants to a greater number of smaller awards could support a wider and more diverse group of researchers, especially given evidence of diminishing returns for the largest grants.  

• Targeted Support: Expanding programs like the NIH's Early-Stage Investigator (ESI) policy, which protects new researchers from direct competition with established veterans, could help close funding gaps for underrepresented groups.  

This landmark study moves the discussion about funding inequality from sociological theory to data-driven reality. By illuminating the powerful and often arbitrary forces that shape scientific careers, it provides a clear mandate for policymakers and funding agencies to redesign the rules of the game, fostering a research ecosystem that is not only fairer but also more innovative and robust.