Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women 301
ferrisoxide.com writes: A paper co-authored by researcher fellow Dr. Fiona Ingleby and evolutionary biologist Dr. Megan Head — on how gender differences affect the experiences that PhD students have when moving into post-doctoral work — was rejected by peer-reviewed PLoS Onebecause they didn't ask a man for help.
A (male) peer reviewer for the journal suggested that the scientists find male co-authors, to prevent "ideologically biased assumptions." The same reviewer also provided his own ironically biased advice, when explaining that women may have fewer articles published because men's papers "are indeed of a better quality, on average," "just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile race a bit faster." PLoS One has apologized, saying, "We have formally removed the review from the record, and have sent the manuscript out to a new editor for re-review. We have also asked the Academic Editor who handled the manuscript to step down from the Editorial Board and we have removed the referee from our reviewer database."
A (male) peer reviewer for the journal suggested that the scientists find male co-authors, to prevent "ideologically biased assumptions." The same reviewer also provided his own ironically biased advice, when explaining that women may have fewer articles published because men's papers "are indeed of a better quality, on average," "just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile race a bit faster." PLoS One has apologized, saying, "We have formally removed the review from the record, and have sent the manuscript out to a new editor for re-review. We have also asked the Academic Editor who handled the manuscript to step down from the Editorial Board and we have removed the referee from our reviewer database."
acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:5, Funny)
Plos One needs to accept all papers from women that describe unfair treatment without reading them. Anything else would be unfair because men are privileged.
Error in headline (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, the rejection for publication could have nothing to do with that one review, it was not rejected due to that review, it was rejected by the editor who showed poor judgement in accepting the sexist review.
Re:Error in headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the AE should have deleted the review and said to the authors "Sorry, the third reviewer never turned in his review, sending it out for a different reviewer."
Scientific journals should be ethical. If a review is rejected as inappropriate, they should just say so. Lying about it, as you suggest, is not ethical.
Re:Error in headline (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an academic journal editor.
I'm torn about whether I would have rejected the review. I would have ignored it probably, but would have I rejected it?
As many have pointed out, if the genders were reversed, this would be playing out in a very different way. Imagine, for example, that males submitted the paper, and the reviewer suggested they have a female co-author. Many would see it as rational, if extreme suggestion, that almost certainly would not have resulted in this outcome.
And, although their suggestion about male superiority is pretty unpleasant at multiple levels, it *is* a possible explanation for observational survey results. None of us might like that, but it's possible.
In that way, the review might represent a very tiny minority, and a minority whose viewpoint I don't share, but it's not irrational, abusive, or nonsensical.
I really have no idea how the AE handled the paper with the editorial decision letter. Maybe they were inappropriate there. But accepting the review per se doesn't seem to me to be an appropriate justification for removing them from the editorial board.
The real problem is that, according to the article, the paper was rejected with only one review. They probably ideally should have gotten more than that.
Even that is problematic to judge, though, because it's hard to say what happened. Maybe they tried forever to get other reviewers and no one would review it? That happens all the time, especially with papers that are not very impactful--no one wants to review them because they're perceived as uninteresting. The editor doesn't do an outright rejection because they think it's worthwhile to review, but then none of the solicited reviewers share that opinion, so they don't review it. (This is why, by the way, if you're asked to review a paper, you should review it whether or not you think it sounds interesting.)
My broader point is that this is all can be much more complicated than it seems initially. It's possible the AE thought the paper was interesting enough to solicit reviews for, tries unsuccessfully to get any reviews, then feels unsure about accepting the one odd review, so errs on the "safe" side by keeping it, and then it turns out to be a powder keg.
Of course, it's also possible the AE was totally inappropriate and mishandled this completely.
The real lesson to be learned? *This* is the real scientific process. Not too pretty. It's why you should be skeptical of all the scientific research you read.
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I'm an academic journal editor. I'm torn about whether I would have rejected the review. I would have ignored it probably, but would have I rejected it?
How can you possibly know without reading the actual review, and also at least skimming the paper?
Re:Error in headline (Score:5, Interesting)
I must agree that you can't really say anything useful about this incident without knowing what was in the paper. The title makes it seem like an outrageous situation: "Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They Are Both Women". I imagine that what actually happened is probably a lot more nuanced.
It could very well be that the quality of the paper was rather poor. The article says the two female researchers just looked at the number of papers submitted by men and women, the number of jobs they applied to, and how long it took them to get accepted for a position. They then apparently concluded that, since women tended to be less successful, this obviously proves the existence of gender bias because the quality of the work cannot possibly be different, you know, men and women being equal and all.
I know that the article only gives a brief and possibly distorted summary of the paper, but if this was indeed the content, the reviewer has a perfectly valid point saying the results could also be explained by a lower quality of women's work. That doesn't mean that this is indeed likely to be the case, just that it would be an alternative explanation that must be ruled out before you can conclude anything about gender bias.
There have been other studies on academic gender bias, for example the one where identical papers were sent in with either men or women listed as the authors, and noting the discrepancy in their acceptance. And yes, a bias did indeed show up there, so I certainly don't rule it out, but you have to use proper methods instead of jumping to conclusions.
The remark about including a male co-author is obiously not a very smart one, but I kind of understand the reason for that suggestion too: a paper on the Palestinian conflict written by Jewish and Palestinian co-authors is more likely to be neutral than a paper written by only Jews or only Palestinians. So for this particular issue, having a male co-author is probably not a bad idea. Especially if they jumped to a conclusion about gender bias without ruling out alternative explanations, which would actually suggest gender bias in their work.
Once again, I haven't seen the paper so this is all just speculation on my part. The reviewer certainly could have phrased his comments a little better, though. Maybe he was just poking fun at them for writing an obviously flawed paper, but it clearly didn't get interpreted that way.
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I am wondering if this is a case where authors should be omitted in the submissions, and instead have the review based on content and quality of citations? Beyond the gender aspect, it would also ensure that there is no preferential treatment given to a 'buddy' or someone with a certain reputation.
Re:Error in headline (Score:4, Insightful)
> And, although their suggestion about male superiority is pretty unpleasant at multiple levels, it *is* a possible explanation for observational survey results. None of us might like that, but it's possible.
It's actually a quite plausible statistical consequence of programs aimed at increasing the number of women in STEM fields.
The highest performing researchers will be given positions and grants regardless of their gender. If there are then slots or scholarships or grants for women without respect to their performance, it will increase the amount of research done by women but lower its average quality.
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> And, although their suggestion about male superiority is pretty unpleasant at multiple levels, it *is* a possible explanation for observational survey results. None of us might like that, but it's possible.
while possible it's also almost completely baseless. It's also possible that these researchers are blonde and the review was actually a subconsious response to blonde hair and odd but true, dark-haired people make the best researchers. No one really wants to admit that blondes are actually stupider but it's something we should be prepared to face when the mountain of evidence in the article reveals this to be a central truth.
It's actually a quite plausible statistical consequence of programs aimed at increasing the number of women in STEM fields.
what?? no not at all. The whole purpose in increasing women in stem was to combat t
Re:Error in headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem in numbers available.
Imagine you have a company that is to hire ten new employees. There are 100 white applicants and 10 applicants of minorities. Their skill lies on the same bell curve; no difference in distribution.
If you perform tests and pick 10 best candidates, statistics say one of the hired ten will be of the minority.
Now if your company policy says "50% must be of minority" you end up hiring the top 5% of white and top 50% of minority. Of course the new white employees will outperform the minority ones simply because you got crème-de-la-crème of the whites and merely "above average" of the minorities. And of course the disparity will cause frictions, rift in the team, disparity of handled workload and worse code quality on the average. Oh, and the company policies will protect the minority employees, punishing the whites who confront them for worse performance.
Trying to enforce a higher percentage of accepted minority products/employees/students than what percent of the applicants they are is in fact discrimination against the majority. In the above example a white guy who got 93% on the company test will be rejected in favor of a colored with 55%, simply because of skin color.
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> statistics say one of the hired ten will be of the minority.
Reality says otherwise. And that doesn't even address the problem of getting in the door. [politifact.com]
> If you perform tests and pick 10 best candidates,
Find a test that meaningfully correlates with quality of code. Google tried, they couldn't. Your fantasy scenario depends on something that does not exist. For someone who isn't an ideologue that ought to cause a revaluation of perspective.
Re:Error in headline (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm an academic journal editor.
I'm torn about whether I would have rejected the review. I would have ignored it probably, but would have I rejected it?
As many have pointed out, if the genders were reversed, this would be playing out in a very different way. Imagine, for example, that males submitted the paper, and the reviewer suggested they have a female co-author. Many would see it as rational, if extreme suggestion, that almost certainly would not have resulted in this outcome.
The difference is that the paper is on the experience of women. It's a paper on women suffering not a paper on men being advantaged [if that's not confusing]. If two guys write this paper they're not writing about how much better the male experience is by looking at it from the male perspective. That would be weird. Maleness is defaultness. The paper in on how the female experience is not the same as the male experience. It's less. Thus it makes sense to suggest an actual female researcher contribute to the
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Either your conclusions follow from your data with reasonable certainty, or they don't. A lack of female researcher might limit the scope of your conclusions - that is, you're missing something you could had reasonably concluded from the data - but it cannot invalidate an otherwise valid conclusion, unless your entire study was fata
Re:Error in headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the paper is garbage and the gender inquisition should be dismantled.
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However, the editor could and should have ignored that one reviewer and accepted it anyway.
Or rejected it anyway?
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Taking it at face value however (like some chump would ) I would say this is one of those situations where it a morally undefendable position theoretically but in practice a very wise idea.
But their solution is bogus. How hard will it be to find a man willing to tow the line?
The hard reality is that in science is deeply pervasive and in many different ways. To think that you can solve it by adding more sexes to the mix...well that is j
unexamined prejudice (Score:4, Insightful)
I strongly suspect the paper was a "joke", and the reviewer was sarcastically reflecting the paper's bias back at the authors.
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed, we don't know the quality of the research. It could have been shit. It could have just been bad science. But now the whole thing has been skewed by the ad hominem attack on the researchers themselves.
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but you are forming your opinion on the matter from Gawker Media. The chances of you having an informed opinion are exactly 0.
No.
There IS a chance of forming an informed opinion that anything posted under that banner is usually mostly crap.
Chances for unbiased, non-sensationalistic, click-bait, flame-war-inciting troll-posts from Gaw*retch*ker Media ARE very close to zero though.
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
you know, maybe people would think modern feminism (including the arguments on women in stem) is not so much a joke if they actually addressed criticism.
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
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When it comes to social sciences, potential is a loaded word. You can have similar studies and conclude completely different results. Does hiring in science favor men [pnas.org] or women [pnas.org]? Which of those studies represent the 39/100 [slashdot.org] studies that have not been reproduced and possibly wrong (poor methods, biases, justifications, etc)?
Is a shirt keeping women out of stem and is that shirt evidence of misogyny and
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
women suffer from sexism far more than men in general society, and especially in STEM careers/ academia
I agree that women suffer more from sexism. I disagree very much about the "especially in STEM/academia". These are probably the areas where women suffer the least, and have many people leaning over backwards to help them. To say that a woman working as a programmer at Google, or trying to get tenure at Stanford, suffers more than a women working in a sweatshop to feed her family is absurd. If you want to see sexism and suffering, you need to look at the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, not the people at the top.
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I do as well, there are hardly any women in STEM/academia to discriminate against.
I remember being enrolled in a CS subject that had slightly over 50% female students - WTF did all those girls go? They didn't end up in the IT workforce.
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That's a ridiculous argument you're making. Just because women have it bad at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder (unlike men??), doesn't mean it doesn't suck for them in STEM when compared to men, which is the test you should be making. I suspect this has partially something to do with opinions like yours.
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I agree that women suffer more from sexism.
I have to disagree with this, or at least to disagree that it is so clear-cut. Men receive less medical attention, die younger, suffer from more violence, and are discriminated against by the police and by the courts. Women are discriminated against in employment and in politics. At the least, I would say that it's ambiguous which gender suffers more from discrimination. More formally, I would say that it depends on your values, and how you weight each aspect of your life. If you want to live a safe li
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll admit that men have many advantages over women in America. We are not a minority -- we are, in fact, a majority, and thus can exert more political influence. Under 30, we are better educated, earn more, have more health benefits, options, and social programs. We live longer. We're excluded from compulsory military service. We are more likely to pass along our genes. We get courted by women who try to impress us, please us, and pamper us. If we're not impressed, we can obtain the genetic material of a more suitable mate for a nominal fee without having to deal with that whole "relationship" thing. We prevail in custody cases under a presumption that we're better parents. We are but 30% of the homeless population. We are sentenced more leniently for the same crimes, and more likely to receive warnings for speeding. When we make bad decisions, it's an accident -- everyone knows we have good intentions. We are almost never charged with sexual assault, let alone convicted, and we receive more support when we're the victims. We can use our sexuality to our advantage. Women are often our fiercest advocates, and protect us unfailingly against external threats. Women provide for us.
Imagine the outcry if any of that were true.
*Shamelessly stolen from another slashdot post
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:5, Informative)
Demonstrably false. Please try again.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem/
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Extraordinary claims demand something more than such "lame" arguments.
We don't see more women than men in the technical workforce so any claim that they find it easier to find work is wildly contrary to the employment statistics and so needs some real proof to back it up instead of a niche study of a few academic hirings.
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
but it's the misogyny that is far, far more worse and embedded in social norms and power structures in jobs and schools,
Boys are killing themselves at 6 times the rate than in the 70's. Women dominate college enrollment and diploma earners. Furthermore, watch this, [youtube.com] then tell me about "social norms". The fact that TFA is even being discussed shows that people actually do care about women, in fact, society is predisposed to rush to the aid of crying women. Prohibition was called for by some whiny puritan women, and they got it. You're a historical revisionist. Husbands used to go to jail for their wifes' crimes. Female serial killers were notoriously hard to prosecute thanks to the chivalry of male jurors and officials (see #6), and today men still serve longer sentences for the same crimes. [avoiceformen.com]
Here's a documentary about workplace sex differences from the most egalitarian country in the world. [youtube.com] Researchers have found cross-culturally (thus not social norms) that the more egalitarian a country is, the more gender differences exist. [wikipedia.org] This is likely because men and women are different and thus prefer different things (otherwise, reproduction wouldn't work); So, when you give them more freedom to decide what jobs they want they express their differences more. Humans are sexually dimorphic species, and it would be foolish to think that the same selection bias that created their very different bodies had no effect on one of the biggest and most complicated organs: Their brains. [bbc.com]
Care to cite any facts? After 40 years of disproving social justice whiners [youtube.com] I have mountains of evidence to back my claims. Here, have 286 studies that show women are as aggressive or more aggressive than men when it comes to domestic violence [csulb.edu], but you won't hear any SJW advocating for Battered Men's homes, even though they're 40% of the victims of abuse, and the target of ~90% of all violent crimes, and make up over 80% of the homeless.
There are over 200 US government programs that exclusively benefit women, and few if any that benefit exclusively men (I couldn't find one). If you want to end sexism, why not have programs that grant assistance to any in need, regardless of race, creed or sex. I'm a poor white kid who grew up in the ghetto, and was beaten up regularly just for being white. My best friend was a black girl. I was every bit as disadvantaged as she, and she had government programs for housing and college available to her, I was excluded from assistance based on my sex and race. My skin and penis didn't win me any sympathy or "privilege". When I cried beaten bloody in the street no one came to my aid, but a startled women cried out at the site of me, men rushed to her aid.
You SJWs say that those who have privilege are blind to it. How ironic that in this gynocentric society, you would continue to be blind to the privileges afforded women, claiming that they are the most oppressed by sexism, meanwhile ignoring that any attempt to garner support for men's issues is typically met with contempt and loathing. Women are pandered to in everything from voting since women are the majority of voters and swing voters and women decide where ~70% of the nation's income is spent.
You want to talk about social norms? How about this: Men are disposed to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of women and children, and for the "privilege" of fulfilling such duty we get less empathy, less rights, less assistance, and a constantly whining bunch of idiots telling us how bad women still have it because they don't like doing the largel
Re:acceptance is the only fair outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad that women are only interested in emotional and weak men when they're having a fight with their macho boyfriend, and they need somebody to talk to.
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That may be your reality. In mine girls are outperforming boys in school and at university, women under 30 earn more than men under 30, single childless women over 30 match the pay of single childless men over 30, women live longer, women get more healthcare, women are less likely to go to jail for the same offence as a man, women are more likely to get sole custody of children in a divorce, women get to retire younger, women get preferential treatment when applying for jobs, women get infinitely better sup
Feminism is self-proving (Score:5, Insightful)
When they resubmit the paper, they can use the initial rejection as a citable example.
Feminism is self-proving: Just complain about it, the shitty reactions you get back are proof that it's still a problem.
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Some strains of self-proc
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Or perhaps it was because you were saying something stupid? I mean, let''s make a list of all the possible explanations. It's the scientific way.
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man, even in sandwich eating, women are still only able to pull 3/4 of what a man can?
#genderequality.
Oh. that was probably 'the joke'. doh.
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No, it's because your wife can't cook. Seriously, rumor is the flies in the neighborhood all chipped in and purchased her a screen door last spring.
Re:Feminism is self-proving (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you could eradicate systematic gender bias and you will still get people who act that way. There are people out there who act like assholes for no explicable reason, and sometimes, you're not even sure that they know why they act like an asshole.
We're probably always going to have gender bias and racism at the anecdotal level. If you're expecting to totally eradicate it, you're going to be disappointed.
Right now, there are white males who are being referred to negatively in a racial and gender biased way. However, for the most part, no fucks are given. The reason for that is that we don't perceive that as being a problem for us. The world we should be going for is a world when you can make stupid comments like that about anyone, and they are in a good enough position to laugh it off. If the almighty white members of the all-powerful Patriarchy can't avoid being referred to in that way, then I just don't think that its realistic to assume that anyone will ever succeed in not having some irrational bias directed at them.
Flip it around and... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure if a paper with the opposite conclusion authored only by men was submitted for review, women (both reviewers and others) would be decrying that fact, implicitly because of the assumed tacit bias of the all-male authors (a plausible concern to be fair, but in both directions), and, if it was in fact the case that women had more articles published than men, suggesting that perhaps an alternative conclusion to systematic bias could be that women just are better in that respect would be a perfectly acceptable critique of the paper.
Re:Flip it around and... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you should have had a woman read it before you hit post.
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You're right, the comma after the second parenthetical should have been a semicolon for improved readability.
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I'm sure if a paper with the opposite conclusion authored only by men was submitted for review, women (both reviewers and others) would be decrying that fact,
Please cite the article about this happening? Or is this just your prosecution fantasy as a middle classed white male?
Re:Flip it around and... (Score:4, Insightful)
Persecution fantasy mostly. Still, there are examples of places that men, in general, don't get a fair shake based on gender. I won't bother listing them all because you've probably heard the Father's Right's schtick before. The reality is that while this is a case of blatant sexism, the reality is that men do also have issues with sexism too.
That said, I have heard some feminists state that they believe that gender bias hurts both men and women. I can get behind that, but I don't think we should trundle that out every time that an instance of a woman clearly being discriminated against comes up. What we have here is a case of clear irrational bias. It should be dealt with on that level as a clear case of bias and not have it minimized with counter examples of how bad men have it.
Similarly, if there are examples of men having biases play out against them, then we should discuss those examples as well, without trying to minimize them by pointing out how bad women have it. Irrational bias should be spoken out against because it is wrong, not made into a tool for one-upping the other sex.
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Women's rights is seen as a symbol of how Godless and socialist modern society is and an impediment of getting back to the situation where "you can't run a coal mine without machine guns".
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I'm sure if a paper with the opposite conclusion authored only by men was submitted for review, women (both reviewers and others) would be decrying that fact, implicitly because of the assumed tacit bias of the all-male authors
While there would certainly be women decrying such a male-only authored paper, most people (women and men) would have the intelligence to leave those biases out of their peer review. If they can find the actual bias in the paper, fine, and internally they may be more skeptical, but a proper peer review would not the cause (male only) without citing the effect (the actual part of the methods/results/conclusions that demonstrate a bias). This suggests that either PLoS One has inadequate standards for peer r
A problem of reputation (Score:2)
The problem is that names are included at all. Papers should be evaluated *without* knowing who wrote them. Otherwise you have bias creeping into what should be a scientific review and editorial process.
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Papers should be evaluated *without* knowing who wrote them.
"Blind" evaluation:
Scientist A has a racial bias and his paper shows it.
Scientist A's paper doesn't get published due to the bias shown, he is informed of it, so he either "corrects" the paper and submits it again under another title OR he pays close attention that it does not SHOW in the future.
He doesn't exclude the bias. He can't. It's inherent to his view of the world.
He just "corrects" for it using politically correct terms and similar tools.
Say... writing "impoverished urban youths tend to be criminal
Real problem, bad solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's a good link -- and to me it highlights something different: selection bias. Not of the people in the experiment, but of the people designing the experiment.
Instead of looking at it as "this person's a feminist, they're going to be biased to feminist results," look at it as "people who think to ask questions in this way tend to get this set of results, repeatedly. This will likely lead to them accepting the associated ideology." So instead of the studies proving the pre-conceived notions of the exp
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Even better is a study linked to by that page, point IV here:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014... [slatestarcodex.com]
The idea was to plan an experiment together, with both of them agreeing on every single tiny detail. They would then go to a laboratory and set it up, again both keeping close eyes on one another. Finally, they would conduct the experiment in a series of different batches. Half the batches (randomly assigned) would be conducted by Dr. Schlitz, the other half by Dr. Wiseman. Because the two authors had very carefully standardized the setting, apparatus and procedure beforehand, “conducted by” pretty much just meant greeting the participants, giving the experimental instructions, and doing the staring.
The results? Schlitz’s trials found strong evidence of psychic powers, Wiseman’s trials found no evidence whatsoever.
Take a second to reflect on how this makes no sense. Two experimenters in the same laboratory, using the same apparatus, having no contact with the subjects except to introduce themselves and flip a few switches – and whether one or the other was there that day completely altered the result. For a good time, watch the gymnastics they have to do to in the paper to make this sound sufficiently sensical to even get published. This is the only journal article I’ve ever read where, in the part of the Discussion section where you’re supposed to propose possible reasons for your findings, both authors suggest maybe their co-author hacked into the computer and altered the results.
this is science, so you have to ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
is he wrong in saying that only having researching gender issues and only having researchers of only one gender may skew the research? what if this were two male researchers and a female rejected it for "ideologically biased assumptions"?
just sayin.
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is he wrong in saying that only having researching gender issues and only having researchers of only one gender may skew the research? what if this were two male researchers and a female rejected it for "ideologically biased assumptions"?
just sayin.
I don't know. We should go back to and recheck the majority of all research published, since it fits that description.
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Re:this is science, so you have to ask... (Score:5, Informative)
And the crazy thing is, they did consult with male colleagues before publishing. The reviewer just assumed that because two women submitted a paper with a conclusion that he disagreed with, that it's specifically because they're women "making ideologically biased assumptions" who refuse to talk to men.
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And the crazy thing is, they did consult with male colleagues before publishing.
If they did so and didn't cite such in their paper, then they're bad at writing papers. If they did cite such, then he's a bad reviewer.
Then there's my usual answer - you generally get things like this when two assholes meet. So they might of written what he saw as a biased paper and reacted poorly.
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If you think that everyone that has a hand in reviewing or providing comments at the request of the author on a paper should be listed as sources or authors you don't know anything about how scientific papers work.
Conversely if you think the only people involved in a scientific paper are either authors or sources you don't know anything about scientific papers or the process.
Almost NO ONE is going to submit a paper for publishing without having everyone they can convince to help them read it and provide com
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If you think that everyone that has a hand in reviewing or providing comments at the request of the author on a paper should be listed as sources or authors you don't know anything about how scientific papers work.
If you think this then you misunderstood what I said. Last paper I wrote went through about a dozen different people.
However, if they received information, and not just the usual constructive criticism, then the person should be cited. Merely having males review the paper doesn't mean that a male viewpoint has been considered in said paper, which is what I was trying to get at.
Just out of curiosity ... (Score:3)
How many papers can we find that have been rejected because all the authors are male?
I wouldn't be surprised if it had happened, but I don't remember reading of any examples. Maybe it's my forgetful male memory? ;-)
In any case, can anyone cite other examples (in either direction)? If they exist, it might be interesting to look into the stories.
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Males wouldn't be researching such a retarded subject in the first place. Unless they were faggots.
This reveals a need for blind review (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as they have blind auditions for musicians.
It's possible this paper (which was on gender differences) is a piece of crap.
It's also possible the reviewer is sexist.
It may even be that the females who wrote the paper are sexist and the paper is a pile of crap AND the reviewer is sexist.
Hard to say without seeing the paper and the data it was drawn from.
In a gender blind society, we can't assume the females or the males are always right or wrong. It may even be from different points of view that different people will feel one or the other was right or wrong.
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A lot of reviews are blind, but in several fields even in a blind review the fields are small enough and the reviewers sufficiently well read to be able to tell which group or individual is writing the paper anyway.
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I'm surprised because every review process I've seen was blind. Papers are submitted with just an ID, authors are not disclosed until the paper is accepted (they are never disclosed if it is rejected, as far as I'm aware). PLoS One is reputable enough that I would've expected the same.
Yeah, I thought it was strange that the reviewer cited the researchers' web sites in the review, where their gender would have been apparent.
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The authors may have proudly declared to be both female and hence may have tried to curry favor.
Re:This reveals a need for blind review (Score:5, Interesting)
As a reviewer, I think it is very likely this paper was utterly biased and did not meet sane scientific standards. While it is unprofessional for a reviewer to snap and put in sarcastic remarks like these, they will almost never be the result of sexism, but the result of the pure stupidity of the "research" presented. Also notice that a paper is never rejected based on just one review except in utterly crappy venues.
Personally, I have written reviews that suggested the authors read an undergrad book on the subject or that an undergrad semester thesis may not be the right base for publishing at a good conference. Yes, many, many submitted papers are really that bad.
Point proved (Score:2, Insightful)
Wowsers! you can't get much more Victorian Era chauvinistic than this. But much of the sciences, like engineering are still good old boys' clubs
at least the journal did the right thing and canned these cretins
reminds me of when a dim friend of mine asked my gf who had just bought a truck why a woman would want a truck..... (same reason as a man -except for the 'validating my masculinity' part)
-I'm just sayin'
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I see it every time I drive through a small town, actually.
Getting lost in the shuffle. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's clear that the man who reviewed the paper is blatantly biased. His characterization that the quality of papers from men must, by definition, by higher quality clearly establishes the fact that he is a textbook example of the problem.
Nevertheless, it may also be true that the people submitting the paper were also biased. But we will probably never know. The trouble is, now that it's been exposed that they were rejected by someone who is clearly biased, there is no good way to honestly evaluate the paper and come to any conclusion other than acceptance. If you don't reverse the action of the biased person than you too will be accused of bias. But when the paper is accepted, far too many people will assume it was accepted because of the first review and it will never get a fair shake.
And before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I'm not suggesting that the paper itself is biased or not. There's no way to know given the limited information. I'm simply commenting on the fact that it will not be able to get a fair and honest appraisal now that it's been engulfed in this controversy. And no matter what the outcome, it will forever have one kind of stigma or another attached to it.
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So yes, now it will be difficult to review the paper on its own merits. Sexism still manages to distort
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His characterization that the quality of papers from men must, by definition, by higher quality clearly establishes the fact that he is a textbook example of the problem.
He didn't say that they, must be of a higher quality. He said that it's a possibility that shouldn't be ignored. You can't just assume it's not true.
Personally, I think the problem is that we try to use science to evaluate things it's ill-suited to do. "How gender differences affect the experiences that PhD students have when moving into post-doctoral work" is not a subject that's best examined using the scientific method. If one wants to come to a real understanding of this issue I would suggest asking a b
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He didn't say that they, must be of a higher quality. He said that it's a possibility that shouldn't be ignored. You can't just assume it's not true.
Finishing up a 300 level statistics course at the moment, and this fits right in with it.
You have the 'null hypothesis', which is what you're trying to reject/not reject. So 'Women's papers are just as good as the Men's' is, crudely speaking, a valid null hypothesis. You do all your math and you either reject it(p=.95), or fail to reject it(insufficient evidence say that they aren't). Other options include Men's papers being better, or women's being better.
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In case you missed it, the stigma has already been attached. Review, even by the public, will be influenced by that stigma. It cannot get a fair and honest review now regardless of who reviews it. Bias will be applied again by the people who care enough to review it. Either to "right the wrong" or to "prove that the first review was right". And even if someone manages to review it with an open and honest mind free from bias, there will be others who call into question the review because it didn't come
Though it doesn't look so good for the reviewers.. (Score:2)
Friday Night Fights (Score:5, Insightful)
You guys didn't believe me when I said that Friday night is "MRA Clickbait Night" on Slashdot.
And here it is, right on time. Every Friday night since I noticed the pattern back in December, like clockwork. Sometimes the article is fer it, and sometimes it's agin' it but it always brings out the most charming fellows and their insightful opinions that "Bitches, man. They're spoiling everything.".
Slashdot really knows its audience, I'll give it that.
Re:Friday Night Fights (Score:4)
Kids, talk to your grandad and you'll get a more modern, tolerant and less sexist viewpoint than is being shat all over the site when articles like this appear.
A possible explanation (Score:2)
So here we have a paper about *sexism*, garnering a review that is egregiously, over-the-top sexist in nature.
So, this would suggest to me (not by any means an expert) that the reviewer was quite aware of what he was saying -- he was being sarcastic, and/or trying to be funny. In other words, the over-the-top sexist tone was deliberate.
Wise? Probably not. But people often try to make points in misguided ways, and of those, sarcasm probably leads the pack. I'm reminded of the Justine Sacco controversy. Sacco
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Maybe this is all an elaborate test to make sure that the paper wasn't computer-generated content (something that apparently has made it through peer review before).
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The submission reported on the results of a survey. That's not a scientific paper. I suspect the reason it only had one reviewer is because all other reviewers thought it was utter crap, saw that the authors had an ax to grind, and didn't want to touch it with a ten foot pole.
If you can't find two well-qualified peers willing to review a paper, the paper should be rejected because it's obviously not of interest to anybody.
PLoS (Score:5, Funny)
First mistake was submitting to the Playboy Lounge of Scientists.
They didn't write paper on proper topic (Score:2)
If the female scientists would have instead wrote paper on the most efficient method of layering a sandwich, then not only would they got published but a Nobel prize.
Stick to what's best!
Bad example (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with this case of sexism is that this is overt irrational sexism that genuinely belongs to another era.
Which is bad (obviously) and the perpetrators should be fully disciplined, but this is not an illustration of the subtle, systemic bias which is real but difficult to prove. *This* sexism is very rare and very easy to deal with, but the more challenging variety remains.
Just attach a calendar (Score:2)
I am tired of women presuming to do gender studies (Score:2, Insightful)
... Stop and read first. The issue isn't that they're women but that they're almost always women and they're presuming to talk about gender issues. Not women issues. But often as not men. It used to be called women's studies and just like the Department of War, changing the name doesn't actually change the nature of the beast.
The gender studies programs are generally speaking dominated by women, most of them are academic feminists, and frankly it isn't science.
They're basically like creationists in that the
So - how did he know they were females? (Score:2)
Judging gender by a name is about as dumb as you can get. John Wayne would have kicked their butts.
We apologise again ... (Score:2)
tempest in a teapot (Score:2)
Acceptance and rejection decision are made by editors. Peer reviewers are intended to help the editor, nothing more. Editors frequently have to toss out bad reviews and get someone else to review a paper. Peer reviews are returned to authors to help them improve the paper.
The problem here is not primarily with the peer review, but with the editor, who didn't do his job. He should have tossed out the review because it obviously wasn't helpful for the author. He then should have gotten new peer reviewers if h
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I'm undoing all my mod points here to respond. But stop using "social justice" like some sort of curse word, it's as stupid as saying "socialist agenda" or "tea party fascists". You're making the assumption that any sort of social justice is a-priori wrong, like equating all environmentalists to being the same as Greenpeace, or all animal rights activists to being just PETA supporters. Just saying that life sucks and deal with is to support the status quo, but the status quo is pretty screwed up right no
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Do you have references to the "we are Social Justice Warriors" paper or the journal it was published in?
Trying to prevent sexism or racism or other isms did not used to be considered an evil thing to do, at least not until the last couple of years.
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I'm sorry you're stuck in the 18th Century.
Please reset your Apple Watch to the correct date. It's the 21st Century, the year is 2015.
Most PhD and Masters graduates are women nowadays. In many of the top research fields the majority of faculty are women.
Please be advised the culture shock may be severe. But you will get through it.
HEY! (Score:2)
Some of my favorite people ever are 20th-centurists! Plus I was born in that century!
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Why limit it to research papers? You have a push for more women representatives in government, regardless of the number of women that actually run, because a man can't represent women's issues, near quota systems to reflect diversity in the workplace, "mansplaining" being default for any male criticism of feminism, ad nauseam.
So why should research papers be immune from bias in the sole representatives are women?
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Likely this paper was abysmal trash and the reviewer never anticipates his sarcastic remarks could have this effect.