Yesterday’s launch of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Science and Health Research (EDIS) network is a step in the right direction. Arbitrary barriers that prevent talented people from entering or thriving in the scientific profession – such as gender, race, orientation, disability and socio-economic status – are clearly counter-productive as well as unjust.

We are all familiar with the arguments for the positive effects of diversity in STEM. In the UK, the Athena SWAN initiative has gone a long way towards institutionalising a positive approach to leveling the playing field for women in academic institutions, for example.

The EDIS network is a broad, many-pronged initiative which seeks to make equality and diversity a “top priority”. With the giant science funder, The Wellcome Trust, as one of the founders, part of this mission is to ensure that science funding is distributed more equitably. I was struck, however, by some of the wording about EDIS offered by the Wellcome Trust’s Lauren Couch:

When we talk about ‘diversity’, we mean everything that makes us unique – from the categories protected by UK law, to our personality. We want the research community to tackle systemic disadvantages and enable as many people as possible to contribute to the scientific enterprise.

“Personality’; “everything that makes us unique”. This is pretty radical thinking from a major funding body usually perceived as holding rigorously high standards of what constitutes fundable “excellence”.

Traditionally, looking at UK research funding more generally, past performance is more likely to be rewarded by further investment. In other words, people with a string of great papers and previously funded grants are more likely to apply for, and scoop up, further funding. For better or worse, this often means that the big winners are older, often male, often those who took a straight career path, often those with the freedom to follow the science to other cities or countries. The rich get richer, and with a limited or even dwindling pot of funding, the poor don’t just get poorer – many will be forced to leave the profession altogether. More money in the hands of fewer people is bound to affect the diversity of creative ideas and hypotheses.

When it comes to science funding, it would be a big culture shift to start encouraging diversity in approach and personality alongside gender, race and the like. I can think of a few areas in my own field, the biomedical sciences, that might benefit from more inclusivity.

The first is age. Recent US data suggest that the average age of major funding successes is increasing. But young scientists have not been steeped for years in the dogmas that sometimes grip more established scientists in a field. Anyone who’s ever taught younger scientists will know of their startling propensity to come out with off-the-wall ideas. Their take on the science will necessarily be fresh and unformed; this could allow for more creative approaches. They are also flexible and open-minded when it comes to learning new techniques.

Unfortunately, many funding bodies don’t allow postdocs to apply for project grants in their own right, reserving the bulk of money for established academics. Bright young scientists often fuel these grants but don’t necessarily get the credit for it. If an early-career researcher can prove that they have a salary and position for the duration of the proposed grant, there is no logical reason why they should be barred from at least entering the ring.

The second is career path. In the past, people were not allowed to apply for personal fellowships if a set number of years had elapsed since being awarded a PhD. These arbitrary “expiry dates” belied the reality that not all people reach their full potential at the same rate. Luck and personal circumstances can all strongly affect one’s “escape velocity”; for example, people with caring responsibilities may not flourish as quickly as their unencumbered counterparts.

Happily, many major funding bodies have come to their senses and abolished this unjust practice in recent years, but there are still a few laggards (the Royal Society being one such conspicuous funder). But early career researchers should be judged on their own individual merits if we want to encourage fresh ideas from people who may not have taken the straightest path.

A third group who can encounter funding barriers are those who work across disciplines or in large collaborative teams. Track records become “diluted” when papers have many authors or when grants have multiple principal investigators; you don’t look so “excellent” if you are not the sole pilot.

It is also often hard to find a good journal in which to publish one’s results when the topic falls between categories. Yet working in large diverse teams offers a brilliant way to solve problems or to look at topics from entirely new angles. The EU excels at funding such projects; Brexit is likely to reduce such opportunities still further for scientists in Britain.

Risk-takers constitute another group of people who have few funding opportunities, although the potential payoffs are high. I have no doubt there are many others.

Continuing to funnel the spoils to a select group of “excellent” people will maintain the less diverse status quo; this in turn will discourage big leaps, tangential thinking and the more collaborative endeavours that foster an environment of excitement and discovery.

So I look forward to seeing what EDIS, and the Wellcome Trust, can achieve. But the devil is in the detail: what novel behaviours aside from the traditional minorities will be encouraged, and how will such attributes be assessed alongside the more tractable metrics of publication record and previous grant success?