Can a Science Proposal Be Judged Without Knowing the Scientist?

Scope: This article explains NASA Science Mission Directorate guidance on its proposal-review process. It does not evaluate individual applicants, predict funding outcomes, or claim that anonymity can remove every source of bias from science.

A science proposal is never only a stack of pages. It can represent years of training, a laboratory’s future, a student’s work, a research team’s ability to keep asking questions, and—in the case of public funding—a decision about which unknowns taxpayers help investigate. Yet conventional peer review often asks reviewers to assess an idea while knowing the names, institutions, and past accomplishments of the people who proposed it.

NASA is trying a different sequence. Its Science Mission Directorate calls it dual-anonymous peer review, or DAPR. Reviewers do not know who submitted the proposal while they evaluate its scientific case, and proposers do not know the reviewers’ identities. Only after the scientific ratings are complete can reviewers receive a separate document about the team’s expertise and resources for the highest-rated proposals.

NASA updated its public DAPR material on September 29. The agency says the system is now the default approach for review of proposals under ROSES 2025, its annual omnibus solicitation for research opportunities in space and Earth science. That makes a procedural change worth understanding. It is not a glamorous scientific discovery, but it can influence who gets the opportunity to pursue one.

The goal is focus, not perfect secrecy

NASA’s description begins with a candid premise: ordinary safeguards in proposal review do not consistently disrupt cognitive bias. The agency’s answer is not to pretend that researchers’ identities can be made unknowable in a specialized field. A reviewer may recognize a data set, a writing style, a distinctive telescope program, or the history of a particular debate.

Instead, DAPR changes the order of the conversation. NASA says the objective is to minimize the effect of cognitive bias by eliminating “the team” as a topic during the scientific evaluation. An anonymized proposal should direct attention to the investigation’s scientific and technical merit, its relevance to NASA, and its cost. The agency says the process works not through ironclad anonymity but by requiring a different way of presenting information and discussing it.

That distinction is important. The process is not designed to erase expertise or to tell reviewers that a difficult project can be done by anyone. It is designed to ask a prior question: Is the idea, as an idea, well justified?

How the two stages work

Under NASA’s process, applicants submit two different documents. One is the anonymized scientific proposal. The other is an “Expertise and Resources Not Anonymized” document, often shortened to E&R.

At the first stage, reviewers receive only the anonymized material. They write their evaluations, discuss the proposals, and complete ratings without the E&R document. After the panel finishes ratings, the E&R information is distributed only for the highest-rated proposals—those likely to be considered for selection. Reviewers then validate whether the team has the qualifications, track record, and access to facilities or other resources needed to carry out the work.

That order is the heart of the experiment. It means a proposal cannot lead merely because reviewers start with an institution’s reputation. But it also means a promising proposal is not funded on an abstract premise alone. NASA retains a step for checking whether the people and tools required for the plan are actually in place.

The agency calls this a sequential consideration of factors that have always mattered, not a decision to stop caring about them. A proposal to use a rare instrument, manage a complex data archive, or coordinate a demanding mission may depend on capabilities that must be real. Fairness in this setting cannot mean treating every applicant as if they have identical resources. It can mean making sure those resources are considered at the right moment and for the right reason.

A growing policy, with visible limits

NASA says DAPR began with a 2020 pilot covering four ROSES programs, one in each of Earth science, heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics. It says the number of ROSES program elements using the approach grew from roughly 10% in 2020 to 44% in 2024. The move toward default use under ROSES 2025 shows that the agency sees the process as more than a one-off experiment.

That does not settle the larger argument. Advocates for anonymity say it can make the scientific case more central and help reduce the quiet advantage of familiarity and prestige. Skeptics can reasonably ask how much an expert reviewer can infer in a narrow research community, how additional formatting rules affect applicants with less administrative support, and whether a system that postpones expertise review can add complexity without eliminating bias.

NASA’s own explanation leaves room for those questions. It does not promise that reviewers will never identify an author. It says absolute anonymity is unrealistic in scientific-proposal review. It does not say credentials are irrelevant. It creates a second stage precisely because credentials, resources, and access can be relevant to whether a proposal is feasible.

This is why the policy matters beyond NASA. Research funding is often discussed as if the choice were between pure merit and favoritism. Real institutions are more complicated. They have to judge an idea, a plan, a budget, a team, and the public value of spending finite money on one question instead of another.

DAPR’s contribution is modest but meaningful: it separates some of those judgments so that a famous name is less likely to arrive first. The next thing to watch is not whether the process produces a perfect, anonymous science world. It is whether NASA continues to publish clear guidance, tracks outcomes honestly, and makes it possible for applicants and reviewers to understand how the rules are working in practice.

Sources & records

[1] NASA Science Mission Directorate, “Dual Anonymous Peer Review” — https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/dual-anonymous-peer-review/

[2] NASA, “Guidelines for Proposers to ROSES Dual-Anonymous Peer Review” — https://assets.science.nasa.gov/content/dam/science/cds/researchers/dapr/2025/SMDDAPRguidelines_030425.pdf