Recently in my Animal Behavior class, we were required to listen to a podcast that discussed the bias of scientific research being done. The man speaking was speaking on behalfs of biologists that studied invertebrates. He said that when someone he knew submitted a grant proposal for an inverterbate subject, it got denied. Another scientist then replied to this news saying that it was much harder to get a grant approved when working with invertebrate organisms as opposed to vertebrates, which got a lot of immediate backlash from the surrounding researchers. The speaker said he looked into this and found a very clear-cut gap in the amount of research being done on invertebrates vs. vertebrate organisms. So much research was being performed on vertebartes because scientists feel it relates more to humans and they only care about the scientific development in relation to our own species. The podcast the went on to talk about his story and how he attempted to bring light to this issue. I do not think he got very far in his case, but it is still an issue that needs to be addressed and re-assessed.
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