WHEN the first kidney dialysis machines became available in 1960 there were so few of them that access had to be rationed. That meant decisions had to be made about who was to benefit from them, so panels were formed to assess the claims of candidate patients. Famously, a review of the decision-making process found that those who were getting treatment tended to be noticeably similar in age, sex and social class to the people on the panels.
This discovery was educative, and it increased awareness about the biases that creep into choice-making, not least concerning which research projects are…
