Female Scientists Less Likely To Be Given Authorship Credits, Analysis Finds (theguardian.com) 85
Female scientists are less likely to receive authorship credit or to be named on patents related to the work they do compared with their male counterparts -- including in fields such as healthcare, where women dominate -- data suggests. From a report: This gender gap may help to explain well-documented disparities in the apparent contributions of male and female scientists -- such as that of Rosalind Franklin, whose pivotal contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA initially went unrecognised because she was not cited on the core Nature article by James Watson and Francis Crick.
"We have known for a long time that women publish and patent at a lower rate than men. But, because previous data never showed who participated in research, no one knew why," said Prof Julia Lane at New York University in the US, who led the new research. Lane and her colleagues analysed administrative data on research projects conducted at 52 US colleges and universities between 2013 and 2016. They matched information about 128,859 scientists to 39,426 journal articles and 7,675 patents, looking at which people who worked on individual projects received credit and which did not.
"We have known for a long time that women publish and patent at a lower rate than men. But, because previous data never showed who participated in research, no one knew why," said Prof Julia Lane at New York University in the US, who led the new research. Lane and her colleagues analysed administrative data on research projects conducted at 52 US colleges and universities between 2013 and 2016. They matched information about 128,859 scientists to 39,426 journal articles and 7,675 patents, looking at which people who worked on individual projects received credit and which did not.
First prove they do as much work as the men (Score:2, Insightful)
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*Citation needed.
Re:First prove they do as much work as the men (Score:5, Insightful)
Women are less likely to want to do certain kinds of work.
I'll counter with, "Men are less likely to want to do certain kinds of work." /another-meaningless-generic-statement
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I'll counter with, "Men are less likely to want to do certain kinds of work." /another-meaningless-generic-statement
One type of work men are less likely to want to do is work they won't get recognition for. So both your and the GP's statements appear correct, and both have implications which can lead to women not getting as much credit on research projects they are involved in. Men are simply more likely to say NO to tasks which wouldn't be important enough to get recognition for, while women tend to be more team players who take on thankless tasks. It doesn't take something nefarious for there to be discriminatory outco
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So both your and the GP's statements appear correct, ...
Of course, *my* point is that the original statement is a meaningless generalization. There will always be "certain kinds of work" any group, including everyone, won't want to do.
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That's silly. The vast majority of all jobs in the world are thankless jobs that get you no recognition. Go ask the person who picks up your garbage how much recognition he or she has gotten from the bosses.
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Why assume that the study has any statistical validity at all?
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I'm a man and I don't want to do any kind of work, and I don't think I'm alone on this here. I'm not sure your statement is as meaningless as you intended.
There will always be "certain kinds of work" that any one/group won't want to do. My statement is just as meaning-less/full as the OP. For OP to single out women is ridiculous -- which is *my* point.
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True, I mean, have you ever had to clean up a biology lab. Yuck! Can't a woman do that, they're used to it from housework classes.
Huh? Yeah, I went to school in the 50s, why do you ask?
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Not only did you instill casual sexism by claiming a completely unsupported bigoted opinion as a "damn fact", but you did so why clearly not reading the article, which states that the study (published in Nature no less) analyzed administrative data about who worked on projects related to publications and then compared who the co-authors were, and found women who worked on projects were twice as likely to not be named a co-author while
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For example, only 15 out of 100 female postgraduates were ever named as an author on a publication, compared with 21 out of 100 of their male peers.
The vast majority of these postgraduates were not named as authors on these publications, and it isn't remotely clear why. A disparity does not prove discrimination [amazon.com].
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Zoom. You completely missed my point with your emotional rant.
https://psychology.stackexchan... [stackexchange.com]
Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas.
These gender differences, although small, may explain one factor why less women appear on papers/patents. Men being assholes may also be another cause. Y can be A + B + C
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You completely missed my point
Can't find you in this thread anywhere, what are you replying to?
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Maybe he's revealing himself to be the operator of the Iamthecheese sockpuppet
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Re: First prove they do as much work as the men (Score:1)
Because who is administratively on a grant does not reflect who does the actual work. There are a ton of âoeadministratorsâ and in modern times even âoeIT peopleâ that get mentioned, included and cited in grant applications and paperwork. They donâ(TM)t end up authoring the paper.
Itâ(TM)s a stupid comparison. The majority of administrators, study coordinators etc at Universities are women, off course they are going to be listed on the paperwork. In some cases those people are A
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You might want to back up that claim with some evidence first before asking for evidence yourself.
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I think you could argue this if discrimination was unusual. We all live in societies free of sexism, or racism, etc.
But, just for the LOLs, let's assume you're an American. So you live in a nation that on Friday repealed Roe vs. Wade. Given the near 50:50 split on how states will support this, this means 1 in 4 Americans have now lost control of their bodies. Against, that kind of nonsense, it's not difficult to give the existence of sexism some likelihood of being a thing.
So given a study that suggests som
No one knows why (Score:5, Insightful)
This data doesn't show why either. It shows one possible reason why. You can't skip from "women are less likely to be given credit" for a given paper to "despite doing the same amount of work, women are less likely to be given credit" for a given paper.
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21% of the men on the research teams were named on publications, as opposed to 15% of women.
So your contention is that 79% of the men did equivalent work on the publication, but were cheated out of their co-author credit?
If not, then your statement is nonsense (and it is nonsense). The fact is that just being associated with some work related to a paper isn't enough
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Next up, every research paper has to quote everyone who ever did anything on the team, along with their contribution.
After that, the contribution has to be omitted because the intern feels slighted for being listed as the person responsible for the transport of hot, caffeinated beverages and due to being earlier in the alphabet than the lead contributor has to be named before them.
Now it's fair?
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I would like to propose one possible confounder that us greatly under-appreciated: age.
If men have been in the profession for longer on average (which is plausible), then of course they will have more authorship credit, because that comes with more experience.
I don't know if this is true in this case. But age confounders appear everywhere. In America, the single biggest correlation to wealth is your age. And the average age of White-Americans is double that of Asian-Americans, which in turn is double that o
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Normally, people who do these studies allow for things like that. It's called statistics .
News at 9 (Score:2, Funny)
Scientists stunned: 4 out of 5 women less assertive than men!
Its like they were biologically made to nurture rather than hunt and kill.
Science community now debating how they can turn women into men to stop this travesty.
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Yeah you must wonder why women don’t talk to you.
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> Yeah you must wonder why women don’t talk to you.
That is because women can't handle the truth.
"Do I look fat in this dress?"
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Hey now, we don't need to bully any more incels into becoming machine gun terrorists. Their lives are already making us miserable enough when they peek out of 4chan and grandma's sub-basement to project their therapy-needing bullshit on unsuspecting strangers from the safety of an unsanitary keyboard, Hot Pockets, Jergen's, and Kleenex.
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Like NORMAL people do, you slimeball.
Re: News at 9 (Score:1)
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That's why sex with me is magic.
When I'm done, I disappear.
A patent missing inventors is invalid (Score:3)
I don't know about other jurisdictions, but under U.S. patent law, *all* of the inventors must be listed on the patent application for it to be valid.
If a company or university deliberately leaves a female inventor off of the patent application, and she qualifies as an inventor under USPTO definitions, then the patent can be invalidated for that reason. Leaving any actual inventor off of a patent would be a foolish thing to do.
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In practice, often only the primary researcher is listed. And many researchers take credit for their students' work. I'm afraid female students may be less likely to insist on credit.
Re:A patent missing inventors is invalid (Score:5, Insightful)
We've run across that, where a colleague of mine was able to prove via his lab notebooks that he was an inventor on a patent but was left off. The patent was licensed out with royalties to inventors almost immediately after being filed no less, and he became aware that the inventors were receiving royalties, so he raised a stink. Was the patent withdrawn? Nope, he was added to the patent and paid by the others his fair share of the royalties, because no one wanted to invalidate the patent; they'd rather hand over some royalties than return all of it.
So just because it's illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and just because it happens doesn't mean something is done about it. I'm sure there are plenty of patents that are just sitting around doing nothing that haven't been fixed. And even if they are earning royalties, my friend had to fight for his rights; many women don't really know how to do that and find it difficult to assert themselves for what they're owed.
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I don't know about other jurisdictions, but under U.S. patent law, *all* of the inventors must be listed on the patent application for it to be valid.
If you read the article, you would see only 21% of the men on the research teams were named on publications, as opposed to 15% of women. It is therefore quite common for the vast majority of those involved with the research to not get that level of recognition.
This probably has more to do with the same factors which contribute to pay gaps in the corporate world. Things like women not being as assertive as men naturally, but being considered bossy or bitchy if they are assertive. Nothing nefarious per say, b
"Working" on a patent... (Score:3)
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Is not the same thing as being a "co-inventor". Only co-inventors can be listed on a patent. Oh well.
I don't think there's any standard for that. Steve Jobs had his name attached to every patent he could, despite doing none of the inventing.
I'm looking forward (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: I'm looking forward (Score:1)
I'll give it a go: was this a randomized trial, where a large number of men and a large number of women were randomly assigned to teams of different sizes and different compositions, or a double-blind experiment where all interactions among team members were over electronic means that scrubbed identifiable characteristics?
No? It was an observational study?
Ah. Then it means jack shit.
It could mean male scientists are racist against women. It could mean female scientists don't perform comparable quality work.
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Media outlets pick these studies up because they make great headlines and they get us all excited. Social media websites like
It's all a scam. John Oliver has a good video on YouTube about science studies. We're all being played. Some of us are playing along because we like trolling and we like letting rage an
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It could mean male scientists are racist against women.
It's funny watching you try to grapple with such topics when you seem to struggle with even the basic definitions. Just by the way, "racist" isn't synonym for "bad". So, when someone tells you you've been racist they're not saying "you're evil person beyond redemption", they're telling you you've done something racially biased/exclusionary/etc. How you choose to respond to that determines whether you are a bad person or not.
Re: I'm looking forward (Score:1)
No, being a racist is bad. Including/excluding someone because of their race is bad. Very few people are racist or sexist, many people like to believe in victim hood.
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No, being a racist is bad.
Well done! Have a cookie.
Very few people are racist or sexist,
Now why would you be so interested in denying this particular piece of reality? Racism barely exists, therefore I'm not racist, therefore I'm the REAL victim here.
Pretending the world isn't sexist/racist doesn't mean that someone is wrong when they call you out for it.
Re: I'm looking forward (Score:1)
The world can't be racist or sexist; only an individual can.
It's part of the same philosophy, dear boy. Over the centuries, we've come to the conclusion that individual human agency is the only thing that can have a moral worth. It is therefore immoral to assign moral worth and judge a person based on something they have no control over, such as their race or sex, while it is perfectly valid to judge someone based on something they do have control over, such as their behavior.
It is therefore perfectly valid
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I do apologise, I thought you were a native speaker. I will endeavour to be more direct in my language next time. I'll probably forget in time I don't tend to remember much about people here.
FWIW, "the world is X" is a turn of phrase, not a literalism. It means that X exists in this world (and X is almost always a property of people in common use), the implication being it's very common. So "the world is racist" is a turn of phrase meaning "there are a lot of racist people in the world", not literally this
Re: I'm looking forward (Score:1)
I suppose I count as a native speaker. But more importantly, I've seen and heard plenty of native speakers say things like "science is racist" or "mathematics is racist" or "private property is racist" and mean it to be understood literally.
Sorry fella. Lots of crazies on your side of the aisle using nearly the exact same language as you. "But take my word for it, I'm one of the sane ones" doesn't do that much convincing when you're operating on the low signal-to-noise environment you're in now.
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I suppose I count as a native speaker.
Well, that's just sad then!
You should probably spend less time on twitter and newsmax and more in the real world.
Sorry fella. Lots of crazies on your side of the aisle
You have literal nazis on "your side of the aisle", so if you want to judge by the most extreme person you can find, you're going to be covered in glory. Not that you even know what my side of the aisle even is. So, you're reverting to your tried and true tactic of just makin' shit up about me. Something
The other explanation is... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Of women, 43% reported having been excluded from a publication, compared with 38% of men. The most common explanation was that others had underestimated their contribution, however, women were twice as likely to cite discrimination or bias as an explanation, while men were more likely to say their contributions did not warrant authorship."
So the other explanation is that women are twice as likely to blame external factors for their lack of performance while men are more honest when assessing their shortcomings.
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Regardless of what people think was the reason, those are both disgustingly high numbers. Unfortunately many people are far more influenced by schmoozing than by having to deal with details of who knows what technical information. Management by popularity contest results in any context is a bad thing.
And, things will not be right in the world until Crick and Watson are stripped of their credit for stealing the discovery of DNA. Anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about needs to do some reading.
What is a Woman? (Score:1)
Easy fix -just identify as a man (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Easy fix -just identify as a man (Score:2)
Why are we acting like the difference between 38% ;men) and 43% (women) is some profoundly huge difference? That's just a 5% spread, seriously...
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The only problem with that is that you won't get hired or admitted in the first place.
So I went to read the article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of women, 43% reported having been excluded from a publication, compared with 38% of men. The most common explanation was that others had underestimated their contribution, however, women were twice as likely to cite discrimination or bias as an explanation, while men were more likely to say their contributions did not warrant authorship.
Perhaps, just perhaps, women opt for "discrimination or bias" because they've been conditioned to expect it, while men are more likely to say "their contributions didn't warrant authorship"...
If men could deflect responsibility for not being included due to bias or discrimination, I think they would be right there with the women who claim it.
Just curious, how many universities have reduced admission standards for women that chose to enter STEM majors? Of course, there's no way that lowered admission standards could have an effect on something like authorship credit, could there be?
If the men and women are true equals, there should be just as many female lead authored papers as there are male lead authored papers, perhaps women are excluding other women from getting authorship credit ("She gates ne", or "I hate her")?
Re: So I went to read the article... (Score:1)
Yeah, women are having to deal with decades of political propaganda from academia, media, government, and now the corporate world. Women are told there is a patriarchal conspiracy against them, despite never ending encouragement, validation, and discrimination in their favour.
Like with blacks, the left needs women to believe they are oppressed. This is the left's conscripted army, just as when they tried and failed to convince workers of their oppression. It's a cruel ideology. It drives neuroticism and div
Re: So I went to read the article... (Score:1)
What is the comparison with men in the same situation though. How many men were excluded for not contributing enough. If you only focus on one group, your bias is showing. If it shows on average 5% of women that worked on the paper are excluded, but 15% of men are too for the same reason, you are actually discriminating against men.
And yes, not everyone that works on something deserves credit.
On the other hand... (Score:1)
Female scientists are 17% more likely to make me a sammich.
oh (Score:2)
...so now we are sure what a woman is? I thought in 2022 defining it is frowned upon?
Maybe it's womb-equipped men that are being excluded?
Or women with penises being included?
Irony: An article about science.. (Score:1)
Diversity hires (Score:2)
"Female scientists" vs "Women scientists" (Score:2)
This proves it can't be discrimination. (Score:2)
They said the effect is present even in female dominated fields. If the cause was men abusing their dominant position by discriminating against women, we would see a major difference in fields where men do not dominate. Finally, proof that there is no significant gender discrimination against women in academia. Whatever the reason, it cannot be discrimination or abuse of power.
Rosalind Franklin (Score:1)
Franklin was a leader in X-Ray Crystalography, along with Dorothy Hodgkins, and she deduced that the DNA backbone was on the outside and that the strands were anti-parrallel. She however, reject the idea of a double-helix structure. Her graduate student Raymond Gosling took Photo 51, the best X-Ray Diffraction image of DNA. The reason why Franklin wasn't credited in Crick and Watson's 1953 Natural articles was because she refused to supply Photo 51 and other data to them. They were given a copy, without Fr