Men apply for and receive more awards than do women in a US grant programme that supports creative thinking in biomedical research, shows an analysis by the science-policy blog Datahound (go.nature.com/sz6iop). The blog examined applicant numbers and success rates by gender for four 'high-risk, high-reward' schemes that are offered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2015, the blog reported, 9,027 men and 3,422 women applied for awards across all four. Overall, roughly the same ratio of men to women won an award as had applied. But the ratio differed for one scheme in particular — the NIH Director's Early Independence Award, which requires institutions to nominate applicants. About 3 times as many men as women won an award, although 1.5 times as many men had applied. Datahound's author Jeremy Berg, who is a former director of the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences, urged the agency to investigate reasons for the disparity in gender ratio between award applicants and recipients.