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Male Scientists More Prone To Misconduct

sciencehabit writes "Male scientists — especially at the upper echelons of the profession — are far more likely than women to commit misconduct. That's the bottom line of a new analysis by three microbiologists of wrongdoing in the life sciences in the United States. Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, Seattle; Joan Bennett of Rutgers University; and Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine combed through misconduct reports on 228 people released by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) over the last 19 years. They then compared the gender balance — or imbalance, in this case — against the mix of male and female senior scientists and trainees to gauge whether misconduct was more prevalent among men. A remarkable 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, or 63 out of 72 individuals. The number of women in that group was one-third of what one would expect based on female representation in the life sciences."

300 comments

  1. Their conclusion, my conclusion. by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Their conclusion: Men commit more misconduct.

    My conclusion: Women are sneakier at committing misconduct.

    1. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Boobs buy a lot of forgiveness.

    2. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by ceoyoyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Studies of marital infidelity suggest women are sneakier. They're no more faithful, but they don't get caught as much. Not having the irresistible urge to brag about wrongdoings to their friends at the bar/locker room probably helps.

    3. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just ask the Womens Studies chicks who claim that women earn 70 cents to a mans dollar.

    4. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My conclusion(after reading TFA): this study failed to account for ratio of male to female scientists. Sure, 68% of incidents may be attributed to men, but are men:women a 50/50 mix at the phd level?

    5. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The study "didn't fail to account" nothing. Cherrypicking results is academic misconduct.

    6. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by icebike · · Score: 5, Informative

      The same male predominance in crime statistics, (violent and non-violent) is found in nearly every country.

      Women commit 1/10th the amount of violent crimes that men do.
      Unless there are sneaky ways to murder people, I don't think your conclusion holds.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    7. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 1

      First, this isn't about violent crime. You'd have to be a nimrod to doubt men commit more violent crimes.

      Second my point was that there are often multiple ways to interpret data - as in this case.

    8. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Artraze · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They aren't terribly specific on what exactly constitutes misconduct, but it seems to be correlated with retracted papers and bad science. Given this, I can't think sneakiness is really going to account for much. After all, no amount of sneakiness really makes up for flawed science because, well, that's the point of science ;). Of course, it could let them get away with bad science and not be accused of misconduct. That I don't know.

      But, as a simple musing, I wonder if this is because female scientists feel they are under greater scrutiny, while men have a more old-boys-club outlook that makes them less concerned that they'll get in trouble for misconduct.

    9. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by RoknrolZombie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Studies of marital infidelity suggest women are sneakier. They're no more faithful, but they don't get caught as much. Not having the irresistible urge to brag about wrongdoings to their friends at the bar/locker room probably helps.

      That could be due to the husbands not being perceptive enough to notice as well. Instead of women being more sneaky, maybe men are just more oblivious.

    10. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by frosty_tsm · · Score: 0

      TFS says 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, but were ~88% of faculty members men?

    11. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      Women commit 1/10th the amount of violent crimes which are reported, identified, solved, and prosecuted than men do.

      Fixed that for you.

      Crime statistics need to be taken with a huge dose of salt. Even worse are traffic statistics, which focus only on who is legally at fault as opposed to whose driving behavior was the actual root cause of a collision.
      It's no different for academic misconduct. A man who makes inappropriate sexual advances towards a colleague creates a statistical data point, a woman who intentionally wears revealing clothing to garner favor does not. Just as one example. So the study might reveal that men tend to engage in misconduct more often, or it might reveal that women are better at getting away with it... or better at getting a man to take the fall for their own misconduct.

    12. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Genda · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Boobs buy a lot of forgiveness.

      Then folks should be forgiving you continuously...

    13. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Informative

      The number of women in that group was one-third of what one would expect based on female representation in the life sciences

      So, no.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    14. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by icebike · · Score: 5, Informative

      First, I said violent AND NON VIOLENT. You stopped reading when you saw what you wanted to see.

      The behavior traits that affect the commission of crime are arguable exactly the same as those driving scientific cheating or misconduct.

      Others on this topic have posted that women are subject to far more scrutiny than men, and they realize this, and understand that they won't get away with it.

      So for you to assert that they commit just as much misconduct but get away with it more often flies in the face of every other aspect of human behavior, as well as the theory of glass ceiling and undue scrutiny of female researchers.

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      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    15. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Last I checked, men are still expected to pay for a ton of shit, so there ya go: your difference. In other news, a company fall apart if the CFO goes on extended maternity leave.

    16. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      But that does seem a pretty small sample size to be drawing such conclusions, to be fair.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    17. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      Well, in Canada a woman is almost as likely to murder her spouse as a man is.

      So it must be cleaning the maple syrup off the plates drives women nuts.

    18. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by icebike · · Score: 0

      This has nothing to do with sexual advances or tight clothing.

      The topic under discussion is "research misconduct" faking results, plagiarism, etc.

      I fail to see how your juvenile "Her Cleavage Made Me Do It" mentality is even remotely germane.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    19. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      I've encountered far more egomaniac male scientists than I have encountered egomaniac female scientists, despite knowing more female scientists. I suspect if you could find a way to more accurately separate out selfish scientists from non-selfish ones, you'd find that correlates much more with intentional misconduct than male/female.

    20. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 2

      Or that when you're not the one cheating, you trust your partner.

      It's only in retrospect that you can see how everything had one, simpler, explanation. It just didn't make sense at the time.

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    21. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think it's because generally men are still the wooers, wooing someone leaves a trail of evidence. In other words, when you are the pursued and not the pursuing, you don't have to be as active, when you don't have to be as active, your chances of slipping up and leaving a mess someone else might find are less.

    22. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by viperidaenz · · Score: 1
    23. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 1

      Nah, you just lick it off. There's a special place in hell for those who waste good maple syrup, eh?

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    24. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by buswolley · · Score: 1

      im sure they did their science right. The problem with this study is selection. Presumably women must fight more to get into academia, and to be considered serious. Thus the women frauds are weeded out earlier than men.

      --

      A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.

    25. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Study done by women, news at 11.

    26. Re: Their conclusion, my conclusion. by skitchen8 · · Score: 1

      This was the same thought I had. There's a huge gender gap in science so it would make sense that if women had to theoretically work harder to achieve the same role, and therefore would work harder to keep their job.

    27. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Dahamma · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, that was all accounted for in the article, both in scientific/engineering academia as a whole and life sciences in particular.

    28. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by mjwx · · Score: 1

      Their conclusion: Men commit more misconduct.

      My conclusion: Women are sneakier at committing misconduct.

      My question: what percentage of scientists are men?

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    29. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by AwesomeMcgee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They controlled for percentage being men vs. woman in saying woman proportionate to their percentage in the field did one third of what men did proportionate to their percentage in the field.

      However, I would posit there is a cruicial missing control here: Authority. Misconduct is far more likely to be committed by folks in authority than those who aren't, I would like to see the percentage of woman committing misconduct proportionate to their percentage in *authority roles* rather than just their percentage in the whole field, likewise mens misconduct proportionate to their percentage in authority roles. I think this would be much more balanced, as it is a very relevant control they're missing from their statistics.

    30. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Genda · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, there are some excellent articles on primate behavior that suggest there are many reasons for infidelity among both sexes. Its not to hard to figure out why women are sneakier... think people, men outweigh women by 50% or more and have twice the muscle mass. If your spouse can kill you with their bare hands,you tend to unconsciously avoid circumstances where that behavior might be expressed. Duh! Many women are taught from an early age to marry a good provider, but when Mr. Oh My Gawd shows up... stuff happens. There used to be strong religious taboos and social morays that kept people faithful, but after the sexual revolution of the 60s and cheap and effective birth control, the gloves are now pretty much off.

      One growing answer has been polyamory or group marriage where a consenting group of people become all singing all dancing. This provides the members with sexual variety, while allowing group members natural strengths to empower the group and weaknesses being reinforced by other members. We still haven't gotten past jealousy and the idea of "Owning" our partners in this society, so don't expect that 50% divorce rate to improve anytime soon. There are however logical and even fascinating ways of people relating that may have real possibilities in the future.

    31. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or Just there is just a much smaller percentage of women scientists. It would not be supprising that 95% of senior scientist are men!

    32. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      a) You're saying that a (fading but still present) cultural expectation that the man pays for the first date causes a 40% salary increase?
      b) Most men are not CFOs.

    33. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      and cheap and effective birth control, the gloves are now pretty much off.

      Well, no, they're definitely on because they are cheap and effective birth control.

    34. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 1

      Plus, women generally don't argue about whose...um..."pub-lications"...are bigger, or where they have been.

    35. Re: Their conclusion, my conclusion. by epyT-R · · Score: 0

      There's a huge gender gap in science

      That doesn't mean it's primarily due to discrimination. Unfortunately it doesn't stop the colleges from pumping out drones who repeat this and other mantras behind the protective screen of political-correctness.

    36. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by icebike · · Score: 1

      Sigh....

      Again, The topic under discussion is "research misconduct" faking results, plagiarism, etc.

      There is not a shred of evidence that females were anywhere near these male researcher who were committing research misconduct.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    37. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by fredprado · · Score: 0

      I highly doubt it was properly accounted for, as it seldom is in these cases.

    38. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Your.Master · · Score: 2

      You said violent and non-violent, but only gave a figure for violent and said "unless there are sneaky ways to murder people", which is about violent crime. That's equivocal.

      I found it surprisingly much more difficult to get nonviolent crime rates broken down by gender. Most talk about overall, or violent, but not both at once so I can't even synthesize because the data may come from different sources, so I'm having trouble verifying your comment. I did find larceny was about 2:1 male:female in the US, which is substantially less than the figure for academic misconduct quoted in the summary which is more like 8:1. Also found a self-reporting survey that gave men about 5:2 on having committed crime in the previous year, though self-reporting has its own biases. Fraud and forgery was about 4:1 in the UK.

      I always knew about the gap in violent crime and assumed that much of the overall gap was consequent. If anything I wondered if the criminalization of female-coded sex work would inflate female nonviolent crime stats. It's also really difficult to pick apart whether there's any gender bias in finding criminals, of either gender, which could skew the stats in either direction.

    39. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by swillden · · Score: 5, Funny

      social morays that kept people faithful

      I have this image of vicious eels guarding women's marital fidelity, ready to jump out and bite any unauthorized entrants where it hurts most. Not sure why you call them "social", though. Seems downright anti-social to me.

      The word you actually wanted is "moré" :-)

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    40. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      Their conclusion: Men commit more misconduct.

      My conclusion: Women are sneakier at committing misconduct.

      I believe that we can not conclude any such thing.

      The problem is that it may be possible that we have six groups:

      A. Men who commit misconduct and get caught.
      B. Men who commit misconduct and get away with it.
      C. Men who do not commit misconduct.

      D. Women who commit misconduct and get caught.
      E. Women who commit misconduct and get away with it.
      F. Women who do not commit misconduct.

      The data only show the proportion of group A to combined B and C in comparison to group D to combined E and F.

      Without further data, given that women may be. A. more honest, B. more adept in social situations, C. less likely to piss people off forcing them to be found out in public, we cannot actually describe the situation clearly.

      However, I believe that it is likely that men are more likely to commit misconduct and that women are less likely to be caught and less likely to commit misconduct. This has not been proven, however.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    41. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2

      social morays that kept people faithful,

      What a wonderful concept, if only we were aquatic enough to take advantage of it. They're fascinating creatures, and any potential transgressor would have a rapid rethink at the thought of all those teeth tearing into their private flesh.

      Thank you, and well done!

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    42. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by ddd0004 · · Score: 1

      A lot of my overweight male friends would beg to differ

    43. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by ddd0004 · · Score: 2

      In most of the companies I've seen, things run smoother when C-level employees are not around

    44. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seems this fails at one of the basic tenants of science. Unless they are able to recreate the findings in a controlled way we don't really know if 1) women are as likely to commit misconduct but represented to a lower degree; 2) the preceding but simply less likely to be reported (we know this from domestic violence reports); 3) misconduct is more loosely defined by women; 4) misconduct is less rigiedly defined by men; 5) men are more likely to be douches; 6) microbiologist are; bad and constructing social experiments or assays; 7) the longevity of a gender in a profession contributes to the tendency of that gender to act negatively towards opposing genders; 8) scientific people are unable to appropriately address an issue of human relations; 9) I can count and they can't; 10) I'm pretty drunk; 11) hey baby nice rack.

    45. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by chronokitsune3233 · · Score: 2

      a) You're saying that a (fading but still present) cultural expectation that the man pays for the first date causes a 40% salary increase?
      b) Most men are not CFOs.

      a) I doubt that's what the AC meant. It's more like the cultural expectation, which may only be present in a given smaller area or subculture rather than an entire large region, is what makes a guy spend more. He feels like he needs to. That's not the fault of men or women of today. It's just a lingering relic of an expectation. I, too, feel I should. After all, that's how a lady ought to be treated. That's what all of the old-school films and such seem to indicate anyway. In truth, I think it's down to the need to fuck myself. Men feel that desire to reproduce, which leads to wanting to make a female happy so that she'll sleep with him. It's a narrow-minded and extremely simplified view since human behavior is inherently complex, especially when medication and/or other drugs are added to the mix, but it's true nonetheless.
      b) I think that was the point. Most men are indeed not CFOs, which is why maternity leave was mentioned. I'm not sure if that's an insult or not, though.

      The poster seems to have a bit of a bitter attitude when it comes to things like this that differentiate results based on the sex of a person. It's a logical division, but I wish it wasn't used. I think this is one reason why women aren't "equal" yet, though obviously the idea of equality is relative.

      --
      I have been a captive in America my entire life. Everybody and everything uses customary units instead of metric.
    46. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Dahamma · · Score: 1

      Well, feel free to read the article and point out where it isn't. It's publicly available so there is no reason to criticize it without evidence...

    47. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      The original point however does stand. This is for people who were CAUGHT. It's widely researched and known that women are far better then men at social manipulation and subterfuge simply due to biological requirements. Weaker sex had to use underhanded means to get ahead of the stronger one that used brute force.

      It would be strange if this particular stage would be an exception to this rule.

    48. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      Yeah, because no woman has ever taken a knife and severed certain anatomy of a male she was displeased with.

      Pissing off someone you sleep with is risky for both sexes.

    49. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by headcase88-2 · · Score: 1

      "The number of women in that group was one-third of what one would expect based on female representation in the life sciences"

    50. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's trying to read too much into the data.

      But when you look at the fact that ~73% of faculty in the relevant field are male, and 88% of reported misconduct by faculty are male, sure, males may indeed be statistically overrepresented, but it isn't quite as impressive as "88% of misconduct is male" suggests. Don't get me wrong: it does look significantly different, but there's already a pretty strong male bias in the sample from the start, so you have to wonder about whether something else is going on.

    51. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sneaky behavior triggers physical abuse. Female ability to manipulate does same thing, hence, all violent crimes man do. Now, if chicks were stronger, you know who your bully would be at school? Heck, I had girl in class who was a bully.

    52. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by mpe · · Score: 1

      .Unless there are sneaky ways to murder people, I don't think your conclusion holds.

      The point about a "sneaky" murder is that it may well not be recognised as a murder in the first place. One fairly well known method is poisoning. There are cases of serial poisoners where law enforcement only got involved once the body count mounted up as well as cases of poisoning which have only been identified as such more or less by accident.

    53. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Genda · · Score: 1

      OMG!!!! Reminds me of the "Eat, Drink and be Mary Syndrome." Apparently, guys going to the Caribbean, drink too much booze (a natural testosterone killer), chowed down on exorbitant amounts of Jerk Chicken (fattened on shocking amounts of estrogen), and smoked a whole lotta Ganja man (known to cause gynecomastia... breast swellng in some men.) The results of a 2-4 week trip was coming back with a shocking development and serious need for a little plastic surgery!

      Or applying for work in a titty bar...

    54. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Maybe the reason is simply due to men doing more negotiation of their wages on average? Are there any studies about that?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    55. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Men *anything* are more prone to misconduct. The reason for this has for some time been refered to as "hormones". I love the was some reachearchers have no knowledge of the world they live in.

    56. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Dr+Damage+I · · Score: 1

      70 cents in the dollar isn't by profession, it's a straight average. AKA a lie.

      --
      "Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
    57. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Well, not exactly what you want, still some interesting facts. After our defence minister Guttenberg was found having plagiarised his doctorate, finding plagiarism in doctorates of politicians became a national sport of some sort here in Germany.

      Here are the results so far for the politicians, who have lost their degree thanks to that so far:
      KT Guttenberg (male)
      Silvana Koch-Mehrin (female)
      Matthias PrÃfrock (male)
      Uwe Brinkmann (male)
      Bijan Djir-Sarai (male)
      Jorgo Chatzimarkakis (male)
      Margarita Mathiopoulos (female)
      Siegfried Haller (male)

      The proceedings for Annette Schavan (female) are currently pending, also Veronica Sass (female) lost her degree already, she is not a politician, though, but a daughter of one.

      Also interesting is the fact, that the majority of the cheating politicians so far are from the conservative or neoliberal circle.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    58. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      * Unless there are sneaky ways to murder people,

      You idiot. Of course there are sneaky ways to murder people. Women have typically murdered (in large numbers mind!) their husbands or children or rivals using covert methods like poison.

      In fact the instances of female violence are massively undercounted precisely because morons like you believe that women are saintly angels who just wouldn't so anything like that.

    59. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by rohan972 · · Score: 1

      Women commit 1/10th the amount of violent crimes that men do. Unless there are sneaky ways to murder people, I don't think your conclusion holds.

      Persuade a man to do it. Women are also more likely to get sympathy from a jury.

    60. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      think people, men outweigh women by 50% or more and have twice the muscle mass. If your spouse can kill you with their bare hands,you tend to unconsciously avoid circumstances where that behavior might be expressed.

      What kind of fucked up world do you live in where most women worry, unconsciously or otherwise, about their spouses murdering them?

      If that is the basis for your marital fidelity then your marriage and entire society has already failed.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    61. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go to hell.

      The witchhunts happened because women were poisining their husbands.
      They thought they should have the power.
      Same as today.

      Women control society, who men can and cannot marry, what ages, etc etc.
      Fuck you.

    62. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      Poisoners tends to be women, or at least did back when poisoning was still easy to detect. That counts as sneaky, though I don't think it evens the numbers.

    63. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by TheCarp · · Score: 1

      > One growing answer has been polyamory or group marriage where a consenting group of people
      > become all singing all dancing

      That isn't "one answer", it is more of a broad category. Once you go off the straight and narrow path of find single partner->go steady->engage->marry->children there are no rules or social expectiation anymore, so you have to negotiate your own rules.

      You go out with some girl a few times, and decide to be "together" through whatever you want to call it, you know what that means and the expectations are. They are fluid and vary, but we all know the form and the expected restrictions. No more dating others, no more sex with others.

      My wife and I, our first conversation was, in fact, about relationships, where we both expressed disdain for monogamy. Since then, the only real rule in this area that we have found the need to negotiate are that we tell eachother what we are up to. We consider ourselves poly, but, mostly just because we like choices... we have sex with others less than many monogamists. We are open to taking on new members at some point though, if the right situation developed.

      That said, we know several other poly people and,.... group of people all singing all dancing? That is hardly the norm. The norm tends to be more normal couples who have secondary relationships with good friends. This happens with varying levels of "polydrama". The full group arrangement actually seems to be on the rare side.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    64. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

      My wife used to teach in a middle school all-girl's school. You wouldn't know if one girl had a problem with another girl even if you observed them closely. They'd look for all the world like the best of friends. Meanwhile, one girl would be effectively destroying the other girl.

      As a contrast, I have two boys. You always know if there's a problem between boys. You can spot the fighting/yelling from a mile away.

      So it wouldn't surprise me to hear that girls grow up to be better able to hide wrong doings while boys grow up to be unable to hide it. Girls are just more subtle at that sort of thing.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    65. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

      There used to be strong religious taboos and social morays that kept people faithful, but after the sexual revolution of the 60s and cheap and effective birth control, the gloves are now pretty much off.

      Or, when Mr. Smith fooled around with his secretary and was caught by his wife, she didn't do much (except perhaps threaten to go stay at her mother's house for the weekend in protest) as divorcing the cheater wasn't a viable option. Women were told to be obedient wives and just go with what hubby said. Besides, a divorced woman was looked down upon. (Society was stacked against women on many levels.)

      Now, if Mr. Smith fools around with his secretary, his wife won't be "obedient" and quiet, but will give him the boot. Best case: They'll go for couples counseling to try to save their marriage. Worst case: They'll get divorced and society won't think anything of it. (NOTE: This is a good thing. I'm definitely not in favor of wives suffering silently in an attempt to be "obedient" to their husbands.)

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    66. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by hackula · · Score: 1

      Pedo alert!

    67. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      Please point out where the you mentioned non-violent in:

      Women commit 1/10th the amount of violent crimes that men do.

    68. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by hackula · · Score: 1

      Domestic violence was socially acceptable up until fairly recently (and it still is in many/most cultures to varying degrees). Obviously, it is a fucked up situation, but domestic violence has been so prevalent that it is hard to imagine it not having an evolutionary effect.

    69. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by patch5 · · Score: 0

      Exactly. Particularly at the "upper echelons of the profession." It's high enough to provoke articles about how it's difficult for women to advance into those positions.

    70. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by geekoid · · Score: 1

      In most places, women weren't even 'people' till about 500 years ago. and is some places they still aren't.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    71. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by geekoid · · Score: 1

      The problem is that people are suing terms like 'the bottom line is' when applying it to a papers and not a consensus of agreement.

      The media, once again, is trying to make scary and angry headlines our of an interesting study.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    72. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Non of which work when someone is peer reviewing a study, and information that comes out later.

      You might want to look up how sciences works.
      After which you can explain to me how someone reading a paper wouldn't report plagiarism simply becasue some woman they have never met has there name on the paper.

      And you understanding of evolution, man, and women is extremely flawed.

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      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    73. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Anecdotes about children. well then, no study needed~

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      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    74. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by AwesomeMcgee · · Score: 1

      Not surprising about the political leanings there, and I don't say that because of allegiance, I'm sure there's plenty of corruption on both sides, but the whole idea of conservatism is based on acting on ones own behalf. So if cheating benefits you, a conservative will probably be more likely to jump at it immediately thinking they are acting for the good of themselves; this mentality is altogether beneficial in government where someone recognizes themself as their country and so they're willing to take unweildy lengths towards benefitting their country(aka themself). It's not a mentality I would say should be overpoweringly filling a government, but that mentality can be beneficial to a country, sometimes having your government trying to find ways to effectively cheat for the benefit of your country is a good thing for instance the steps FDR took to cheat his way out of neutrality and get us into WWII was beneficial for the economy as well as, you know, all of Europe. Sometimes going to whatever lengths in attempt to benefit one's country is however not so good, I'm looking at you Iraq. So in conclusion: the reformation was a good version of people trying to act only for themselves (the dukes etc tossing out the churches so more of the loot went to them), but the enormous portions of the worlds wealth being lost to corruption via bribery etc is a bad version.

      Cheating plagiarizing your doctorate? Some of those politicians may have actually done real good for the people, and the harm of their cheating was actually only the harm some of the politicians caused accidentally out of stupidity where non-plagiarism would have kept them out of office. Immoral sure, but harmful? Meh. Sometimes the government needs immoral people, just keep it to a minimum. Non-lying-cheating people would have maintained the US neutrality during WWII.

    75. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by AwesomeMcgee · · Score: 1

      Make no mistake; I am a liberal and hate immoral people. I'm just pointing out immorality is part and parcel of conservatism, and pointing out that doesn't make conservatism bad, just different from it's counterpart.

    76. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Domestic violence is socially acceptable provided it is women who are the perps.

    77. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by jklovanc · · Score: 1

      Sorry but sneakyness was not accounted for. Here is a quote from the article;

      We cannot exclude the possibility that females commit research misconduct as frequently as males but are less likely to be detected.

      That is the problem with doing statistical analysis of investigations as opposed to incidents as all incidents may not be detected and/or investigated.

    78. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      I don't think you quite understand the concept of subterfuge, nor the subject of the thread.

    79. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by desse · · Score: 1

      While it is true that women tend to be sneakier about it, Men also have more psychopath traits. I am not calling men psychopaths, but if you look at how the traits of it work, men are more prone to elevate themselves without concern for the others around them. Women are less so. Most women. This is very generalized with exceptions on both sides.

    80. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by icebike · · Score: 1

      In the sentence above the one you chose to quote.

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    81. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because crimes laws are based on things that are more difficult to restrain, it's not inclusive of all misconduct or dishonesty. In most DV women are the initiators but they end up as a crime vicitms.

    82. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Statistics says for some kinds of distribution(not massively different population sizes between men and women that would create statistical noise), you can get pretty damn accurate with less than 100 samples. Assuming no methodology problems(a big caveat, granted), the number used in the study is more than enough. The only question in my mind is what is the misconduct vs no misconduct sizes? If you only have a few cases in thousands, then even a slight bump in the numbers would throw the proportions about. When you are dealing with very small number of positive cases for a large set, the numbers required to be statistically significant is much higher.

      Consider for instance two loaded coins, we don't know the probability for getting heads or tails for either coin. Suppose we flip one coin 50 times, and the other 50. Suppose we get 1 heads for the first coin, and 2 heads for the second. To compare the two and say we found twice the number of positives for the second coin compared to the first can mislead those untrained in statistics. With such low positive chances, you must expect a lot more noise in the results. This is when more samples are useful. It could very easily be that both have the same probability and one just happened to get one extra heads. If however, you get 30 heads with the first coin, and 15 with the second, then something different happens. The comparison of the two coins has more truth in its face value(heh, get it?). The error due to noise is not significant enough to invalidate or make uncertain the claim that 'one coin has twice the probability of the other'. Even though both cases find one is twice the other, the uncertainty due to noise is much greater in the first case.

      So my point is this; the sample may or may not be enough depending on overall population figures.

    83. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by icebike · · Score: 1

      In most DV women are the initiators but they end up as a crime vicitms.

      Citation needed.

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    84. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      And of course no one is allowed to be replying to just part of what you wrote, but has to give an all encompassing response to the whole thing?

      I guess you can keep thinking that.

    85. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Holladon · · Score: 1

      In most places, women weren't even 'people' till about 500 years ago. and is some places they still aren't.

      Based on the fact that the top comment wastes no time getting to the sputtering about how the study must be flawed because wimmins is sneaky, I'm somewhat inclined to think slashdot one such place.

    86. Re:Their conclusion, my conclusion. by Holladon · · Score: 1

      Sneaky behavior triggers physical abuse. Female ability to manipulate does same thing, hence, all violent crimes man do.

      Wow. Usually people try to hide their victim-blaming by dressing it up in fancy words and pseudo-science. Not you. Nope, you'll just dive right in there and come right out and actually go ahead and SAY that women are to blame for being abused because they're sneaky.

      And people wonder why feminism is still relevant.

  2. Male scientists more prone to get caught by sleepypsycho · · Score: 0

    Female scientist are just better at getting away with it.

    1. Re:Male scientists more prone to get caught by Genda · · Score: 1

      Oh yeah, because everyone knows that the uterus contains an invisibility field... sorry girls, I know, we all took the oath not to tell the men about the powers of the uterus, but its time they understood just what they're up against. At least I didn't mention the nipple death rays... Oops!

    2. Re:Male scientists more prone to get caught by sleepypsycho · · Score: 1

      Sorry. I wasn't really serious. I should have been more clear about that. Maybe a ;). My point is that the sample is non-statistical in nature. There are many possible explanation of why the reports would be skewed. Included in this would be reasons why one group of the other was being more prone to being caught.

      I know gender issues are really challenging subject, especially in science. I think the exchange here highlights the point. The direct meaning of what I wrote is that men are not even good at cheating. It is interpreted as bias because of the stereotypes in the culture. The accurate interpretation is that I'm not very good at making a point.

      In all honesty I know lots of scientists, Some are really good at what they do some aren't. Gender does not make an appreciable difference from what I have noticed. With older scientists, now near retirement age, what I have seen is that all the women are quite good. I think this is because only the really good ones could succeed despite the biases. Of course this is very anecdotal and I am no expert in judging scientists.

    3. Re:Male scientists more prone to get caught by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Actually, the study included also papers retracted due to suspected fraud. I can imagine that people, especially male ones, are more cautious about telling suspicion of fraud about the work of women than on the work of men. So there might actually be such a systemic bias in the data.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  3. Not sure why this is news... by KrazyDave · · Score: 1

    So, the misconduct incidence among male scientists mirrors exactly the misconduct incidence among male non-scientists (by-gender incarceration rates.) Erm...okay.

    --
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  4. Misconduct by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How is this news? I mean, really: In every aspect of society, men are more aggressive and prone to antisocial behavior than women. The headline might as well be reading "Sky found to be blue, water wet." It might be interesting if it turned out that the ratios were significantly skewed only in scientific endeavors compared to the baseline, but I'm not seeing that here. I'm seeing someone study a sample from a specific subculture and realize that... it's just like a random sample from the general population. It isn't new or groundbreaking. It's simply confirmatory... extra empirical findings that support what's already established.

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    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Misconduct by Livius · · Score: 1

      Exactly. I'm sure there's some value in finding more detailed statistics for the scientific community, but we already knew men are disproportionately represented in crime and high-risk activities in general.

    2. Re:Misconduct by headphones54321 · · Score: 2

      I'm don't think what you are saying is proven. The article abstract states that 94% of the misconduct was fraud, not being aggressive or antisocial as you indicate. Is there a well established baseline of men being more fraudulent than women? I would agree with you that men are typically aggressive (thanks testosterone), but dishonest? I'm not sure it flies... It's worth taking a look at the social/demographic aspects of this. The authors are looking for a way to target academic fraud, and knowing who commits it helps identify why, and how to address it.

    3. Re:Misconduct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Plus, at least historically, society is more prone to punish women more harshly than men for the same misbehavior. (I'm a man, but at least I'm not so chauvinist and deluded to not realize than women, even in this day and age, have a less favorable position in society)

    4. Re:Misconduct by girlintraining · · Score: 1

      I'm don't think what you are saying is proven. The article abstract states that 94% of the misconduct was fraud, not being aggressive or antisocial as you indicate.

      That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

      an.ti.so.cial adj.
      1. Shunning the society of others; not sociable.
      2. Hostile to or disruptive of the established social order; marked by or engaging in behavior that violates accepted mores: gangs engaging in vandalism and other antisocial behavior.
      3. Antagonistic toward or disrespectful of others; rude.

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    5. Re:Misconduct by Your.Master · · Score: 2

      Putting a figure on how much is news. I honestly would not have expected the figure to be 88%, which does seem skewed compared to baseline at first glance. That's like the violent crime gap, which is often state to be more significant than the nonviolent crime gap.

      Also I wouldn't be so sure without studying it that academic misconduct directly relates to aggressiveness.

    6. Re:Misconduct by mvdwege · · Score: 1

      Why would you automatically assume the difference in fraudulent behaviour is tied to a biological mechanism? For sure testosterone has an influence on behaviour, but why implictly discount 'boys will be boys' and the 'old boys network'?

      Mart

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    7. Re:Misconduct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I disagree, the study is only showing data pertaining to the problem itself, i.e. misconduct. The skew is not showing the figure for the total number of scientists as a whole, and of those the percentage of males vs females, which should be hugely relevant. I think these days there is a growing number of female scientists but to just go by the number of misconducts being 228 and to try and make sense of that number alone as opposed to the total population data set of scientists in the respective fields, is a laughable joke.

      You basing your data on other countries issues is a good example why this article is total FUD.

    8. Re:Misconduct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is this news? I mean, really: In every aspect of society, men are more aggressive and prone to antisocial behavior than women.

      That's sexism right there. It's what leads to having no males teaching in primary school, and guys being ridculed if they are beaten by their wives. I actually had a female teacher insist that a man can't be raped. (I presume she meant by a woman and because the man has to be erect). It is unfortunate that women often can't even see it when they are being sexist.

    9. Re:Misconduct by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      How is this news?

      Because often "inuition" and "common sense" is just plain wrong, especially with something impossible to observe directly. For example: misconduct statistics cannot be observed without extensive effort and any personal anecdotal observations will be undoubetly biased by the observer's relatively small personal environment.

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      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    10. Re:Misconduct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I actually had a female teacher insist that a man can't be raped. (I presume she meant by a woman and because the man has to be erect)

      She might have been talking about US laws that, by definition, make it physically impossible for men to be raped. Some places have changed the definition, thankfully.

  5. Probably because women can't get away with it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Science is generally a "boys club" profession that isn't friendly to women in general (yes, of course exceptions exist, no need to get indignant). Women have to work harder than men to get the same amount of respect, and can't get away with misconduct as easily because they face more scrutiny. So women who are inclined towards bad behavior get weeded out sooner than men with similar levels of inclination. Those who remain are the ones who either have strong ethical objections to misconduct, or simply don't want to risk their careers.

    1. Re:Probably because women can't get away with it by icebike · · Score: 1

      Nonsense.

      Women earn degrees at just about every educational lever at a higher rate than men. Women account for the majority of post secondary degrees in the US.

      The old idea that women have to work harder to achieve degrees simply has very little data to support it.

      As far as facing more scrutiny, why would that be the case since they are caught far fewer times than men? If some one is going to be scrutinized its most likely the person with a higher than average statistical propensity to bend the rules. In almost every aspect of society, that would be men.

       

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    2. Re:Probably because women can't get away with it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The old idea that women have to work harder to achieve degrees simply has very little data to support it.

      Then it's fortunate that I never said anything about achieving degrees. I'm talking about research being performed by professional scientists. And so is TFA.

    3. Re:Probably because women can't get away with it by Genda · · Score: 3, Informative

      You've made a large number of presumptions here, most of which don't hold water. The first is that life sciences have been dominated by men for many decades and only now are beginning to get access from women. I personally had three girl friends who went to prestigious schools (Cal Tech, Stanford and Carnegie Melon) in the 70s and did very well in Biological Studies receiving Masters and PhDs degrees. Each woman was sat down and told that nobody would hire them. Nobody would fund them. That they exactly 0 future in life science and that their only avenue of expression in the field was to go into medicine. All three women became doctors.

      Even today, women only account for less than 38% of the life science researchers. So the fraud finding among female scientists being 12% suggests a 3X lower fraud rate than their male counterparts. They do have to work harder in life science which is still male dominated. The people who will review your work are men. The people who set the directions for rewarding researchers are men. Pretty much all the rule in life science are made by men. The competition is fierce, funding is a winner take all proposition and they only fund publishers of successful research. Men get the lion's share of research dollars. So pretty much everything you said is simply refuted by the facts.

      Things may change in the future, but this is the current state of affairs.

  6. Majority far more likely to collude than minority by Tanman · · Score: 1

    I'm willing to bet that this discrepancy is more a factor of groups vs. individuals than male vs. female. Aka "peer pressure" aka "everyone is doing it" etc.

  7. Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Alternatively, women are allowed to get away with it.

    1. Re:Alternatively by Genda · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Wow... rather than look at logical behavioral and sociological differences in men and women that might result is this finding, the male response is women are just as bad at men but aren't held to account for their misdeeds. Hhmmmm. Interesting. So in how many societies on the planet are baby boys being slaughtered or dumped on orphanage porches to make way for female babies? How many men are being forced to stay in their houses under threat of death even when staying in that house may include starvation? How many men are surgically mutilated to ensure that they will never enjoy sex and remain faithful to their wives? How many men are being raped, mutilated, burned, disfigured or killed by women committing acts against society? How many men are being hired by women for their large bulges and rippling muscles? How many men have to deal in a daily battle of sexist, matriarchal social norms that cause them to be members of the poorest classes in society, be burdened by frequent abandonment by women, left holding the bag for raising single parent families? You know, they used to keep statistics about Single Fathers who were abandoned by their wives, but the number was so ridiculously small that it disappeared into the statistical noise so they stopped tracking it. How many men have to deal with a female controlled medical system that caters to women's every sexual whim but virtually ignores even the most basic reproductive needs of men? You know... you guys are a bunch of whining ass hats who haven't even gone to the slightest trouble to come up with a world view that reflect anything that has to do with this space time continuum, talk about narrow minded and delusional.

      Try this on, just as a possibility. For a woman to succeed in science she has to work 3 time harder than a man, undergo 3 times as much critical scrutiny by a male dominated peer review and sweat 3 times harder about getting it right in the first place. Consider men tend to be more competitive and women more collaborative, so men working more alone might be more tempted to fudge results because 1. They want to beat the competition and 2. There are fewer folks looking over their shoulders. Might it even be possible, that women have stronger social orientation then men and therefore a stronger sense of consequence for their actions. This would be consistent with research that suggest most female misconduct happens after menopause when estrogen drops and testosterone rises.

      Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of snooty little self serving bitches out there who use sex as a way to get ahead. You just want to notice "That Girl" inn't getting patted on the back or "high fived" by the other women in the office for her behavior, because most of us want to succeed on our merits, intelligence and personal dignity, and we see a little trollop screwing her way to the top as a cheater. Winning is less important to us, that contributing and leaving things better than we found them. Perhaps that is the important difference between women and men in general. Winning is great, winning at all costs, not so much.

    2. Re:Alternatively by butalearner · · Score: 1

      I'm sure AC was deliberately being misogynistic, but I assumed the first guy was trying to be funny. I shake my head at the insightful mod, though.

      I'm a little disappointed that they didn't conduct a parallel study where they asked a random sampling of people the same question, though.

    3. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow... rather than look at logical behavioral and sociological differences in men and women that might result is this finding

      Men and women, only different as a generality when its in the best interests of the one calling them different.

    4. Re:Alternatively by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh, so it's only ok for feminists to stereotype?

    5. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wow... rather than look at logical behavioral and sociological differences in men and women that might result is this finding, the male response is women are just as bad at men but aren't held to account for their misdeeds.

      They merely mentioned a few alternate possibilities. The rest of that paragraph is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with whether or not those possibilities are realistic. It's just, "Women endured and continue to endure sexism far more than men." How did you believe that that was relevant at all? Talk about off-topic.

      Try this on, just as a possibility.

      That's another possibility. The difference between you and me, though, is that I won't go on an irrelevant rant to try to 'disprove' it.

    6. Re:Alternatively by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For a woman to succeed in science she has to work 3 time harder than a man, undergo 3 times as much critical scrutiny by a male dominated peer review and sweat 3 times harder about getting it right in the first place.

      Please show me the woman who is working 180 hours a week.

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    7. Re:Alternatively by nucleofide · · Score: 1, Troll

      The thought a woman in "life sciences" would have any measure of the futility in verbosity, expressed thusly, I rest my case.

    8. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've made an important point, that the previous posters shouldn't have leapt to the conclusion that women are just as prone to misconduct as men (rather than, say, raising it as one of several possibilities), but the tone of your post is painfully misandrist. In particular:

      How many men are surgically mutilated to ensure that they will never enjoy sex and remain faithful to their wives?

      In the US, surgical mutilation of men is almost universal, while that of women is almost unknown. The original intention is to discourage them from committing the "sin" of masturbation, but in either case it's a deliberate attempt to control their sexuality while they're unable to defend themselves.

    9. Re:Alternatively by spazdor · · Score: 2

      Alternatively, women face a much greater burden to be taken seriously in their profession than men do, and less leeway leads to cleaner habits.

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    10. Re:Alternatively by spazdor · · Score: 1

      All I can think while scrolling through this trainwreck is, "oh. this thread again."

      Come on, Slashdot, let's hear ALL OVER AGAIN about how a particular demographic has myriad unfair advantages over others, and yet mysteriously, has not managed to leverage those advantages into a superior social or economic position. Do your worst.

      --
      DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
    11. Re:Alternatively by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      So in how many societies on the planet are baby boys being slaughtered or dumped on orphanage porches to make way for female babies? How many men are being forced to stay in their houses under threat of death even when staying in that house may include starvation? How many men are surgically mutilated to ensure that they will never enjoy sex and remain faithful to their wives? How many men are being raped, mutilated, burned, disfigured or killed by women committing acts against society?

      So you're saying women are less prone to scientific conduct because they don't want to be slaughtered in an orphanage? I guess that makes sense.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    12. Re:Alternatively by chronokitsune3233 · · Score: 0

      Actually, I think women do work much harder, but not at their profession as the statement would have you believe. Because of the "male dominated" area, women are more driven, I think--driven to succeed as well as driven to be more professional than their male peers. Women often mop the floor with men because guys can't keep their hormones in check usually. Sexy scientist babe? -stare- -stare- -STARE- (are you burning a hole through that top of hers yet?) We can't help how we are as guys. In a way, women are superior in this regard. Men are scared of scandal, and women can manipulate that to their advantage because they're often more cunning. I only say that because guys can't control their hormones, leading to less rational and logical thought processes. What it comes down to is the inherent male need to fuck, a natural act meant for reproduction that was vulgarized by women who didn't want to just be baby-makers through rape. This need is what causes prison rapes in male prisons. I'm not saying it doesn't happen in female prisons, but you don't hear about it nearly as much because it just doesn't happen as often.

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    13. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Who modded this "interesting?" It's incoherent trolling. Derailing if you're being generous.

      That last paragraph is the most sexist thing I've read in this discussion.

    14. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      must be a virgin

    15. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Two can play at this game. Genital mutilation is still regularly practiced on males in the US. Women are more physically violent in relationships (see any of the 200+ studies on this topic), but men are ridiculed if they ever complain about it, are arrested if they report it to the police, and any defensive action will result in a prison sentence.

      Single fathers are rare because the legal system overwhelmingly favors taking children away from their father. Divorce is similar. The homeless are almost entirely men because there is far more government support for poor women. Women's reproductive health is a medical specialty paid for by insurance, while male contraceptives haven't fundamentally changed for a thousand years and "men's health" isn't really a thing (beyond some rare doctor's individual interest).

      Something that is likely most relevant to Slashdot's user base is society's expectation that men drive the entire courtship process, and suffer countless painful rejections by women. Men are also pushed into the dangerous or unhealthy jobs, while society is perfectly accepting of women as homemakers.

      Heck, 60% of men throughout history never had surviving children, so society has always treated men as expendable. Men are competitive because the prize for first place is one or more women of your choice and a position of authority, second place is being first place's servant, and third place is dead. Men have to go big or go home, so I'm not particularly surprised that this mentality would lead to academic misconduct. OTOH, men tend to be in more senior positions than women since feminism is somewhat recent, so that would skew the results. (It also skews the "three times harder" nonsense, as does maternity leave and the tendency of women to not negotiate salary or pursue jobs with long hours but high pay.)

    16. Re:Alternatively by mdielmann · · Score: 1

      Winning is great, winning at all costs, not so much.

      Well, you're never going to rule the world with that attitude!

      --
      Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
    17. Re:Alternatively by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Try this on, just as a possibility."

      Calm down. Don't get your knickers in a twist.

      According to OP, this analysis was done by three "microbiologists of wrongdoing". I would not place much faith in their accuracy. Unless I am mistaken, they belong to the same professional organization as the "physicists of pillage".

    18. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My dogs a female, and even she said you're a whiny bitch.

    19. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you saying that men are _inferior_, and not equal?

      A lot of the stuff that you mention is due to man-favoring cultural garbage. Men don't HAVE to be that way. Period.

      So perhaps what WE (HUMANS) should do is find a way to STOP all those problems, and make a world where NEITHER sex oppresses the other, and which NEITHER "lords over" the other.

      Do you agree?

    20. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... sexist, matriarchal social norms ...

      You're effectively saying societies where men have the wealth are oppressive to all women. I've been hearing that since the '50s. Yes, there is a boy's club mentality. But none of those bra-burning women are demanding more men do child-centre care, nursing, ballet dancing, or school-teaching.

      Similarly they're not demanding that half of people who die at work are women, that half of people in prison are women, that half of people living under a bridge are women, that half of people who fail school/college are women, that half of people with autism and asperger's are women, that half of the suicides are women.

      Until women can be left to die with the same indifference as men, there will never be equality. Until women are judged by their earning capacity, not their sexual/reproductive capacity, there will never be equality.

      ... be burdened by frequent abandonment by women, left holding the bag for raising single parent families ...

      Three-quarters of divorces are initiated by women. And the family court is devoid of women demanding he take the children.

      In my state, women didn't have to pay child support when the man took custody. But a man was on the hook for 16 years of child-support his entire life. That last law they revoked, when women also had to pay child support. The law is now equal, but far less onerous since mothers have been held accountable.

    21. Re:Alternatively by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      How many men have to deal in a daily battle of sexist, matriarchal social norms that cause them to be members of the poorest classes in society

      It is true that there tends to be more men then women on the top societies. However, it is also true that there tends to be more men than women on the very bottom of societies. Just look at the prison population in ... well ... anywhere. Look at who gets to die in battle for their country, or for their clan, or for their family. Look at who lives on the streets, at least in western societies.

      For a woman to succeed in science she has to work 3 time harder than a man, undergo 3 times as much critical scrutiny by a male dominated peer review and sweat 3 times harder about getting it right in the first place.

      There was a study done on all new Danish professorships some years ago (I think i covered 5 years). Only 25% of them were given to women. However, for 50% of the positions, there were no female applicants. When the number of applications were taken into consideration, female applicants were around twice as likely to get the job (I don't remember the exact number). This was before the Danish universities started discriminating against male applicants by giving the departments an economic bonus for hiring a female professor.

      Mind you, the US seems to have much more sexism than Europe*, at least from what I can gather in comments online, so that could be the reason for the differences in outlook.

      * OK, at least Denmark. Given how long time it took me to figure out how different it was in the US, I can't really talk about any other countries.

    22. Re:Alternatively by eth1 · · Score: 1

      Something that is likely most relevant to Slashdot's user base is society's expectation that men drive the entire courtship process, and suffer countless painful rejections by women.

      Actually, this means that as a man, I get to be in control of the process. I (usually!) don't have to deal with random creepy women coming on to me at all times, but only the ones I want to deal with (a beautiful woman acting aloof usually isn't because she's a bitch, it's a time management technique). I can schedule dates at times and places convenient to me (especially important on the first few, since there's a risk of her not showing up). There are thousands of reasons a woman might "reject" you that have nothing to do with them thinking that you're a loser (maybe she's late for something, and doesn't have time to talk?).

      Where's the downside again?

    23. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      women face a much greater burden to be taken seriously in their profession than men do

      Like in nursing and lower education?

    24. Re:Alternatively by Applekid · · Score: 1

      Surely if the headline was "Female Scientists More Prone to Misconduct" and someone comments that men can get away with it because they're part of the club, you would be lashing out against their lack of interest in investigating behavioral and sociological differences with just as much vigor?

      So in how many societies on the planet are <long list of grievances but with gender roles reversed>. You know... you guys are a bunch of whining ass hats who haven't even gone to the slightest trouble to come up with a world view that reflect anything that has to do with this space time continuum, talk about narrow minded and delusional.

      Just curious, how many /. readers do you think are directly involved in burning and raping women and female "circumcision" (not suggesting it's as innocuous, just brevity)?

      Try this on, just as a possibility. For a woman to succeed in science she has to work 3 time harder than a man, undergo 3 times as much critical scrutiny by a male dominated peer review and sweat 3 times harder about getting it right in the first place.

      Where does that number come from? What does it mean to work three times harder? Are you suggesting women are working 24 hour days in the science fields while men are working 8 hours? Three times as much critical scrutiny? I'd be happy if my papers were read by three times as many people. Sweat three times harder? Maybe you should be more honest and just admit you pulled a number out of your ass because it sounds good and fits with your fantastical preconceived notions.

      Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of snooty little self serving bitches out there who use sex as a way to get ahead. You just want to notice "That Girl" inn't getting patted on the back or "high fived" by the other women in the office for her behavior, because most of us want to succeed on our merits, intelligence and personal dignity, and we see a little trollop screwing her way to the top as a cheater. Winning is less important to us, that contributing and leaving things better than we found them. Perhaps that is the important difference between women and men in general. Winning is great, winning at all costs, not so much.

      So, you're all for women getting ahead (because it's unfair to work, what was your number? 3 times as hard?) except when they do it in a way you don't approve. It can't be because they play the game better than the dungeon masters. We're talking science here, getting to a position where you can lead the direction of research isn't a win for the self, it's a win for everyone. And if we are going to expand the scope to include what is outside of science, would you be such a defender of dignity towards someone who, say, tried to make ends meet standing on a street corner dancing with a sign? I personally think that's very demeaning, but I would never wish ill upon them for doing so.

      Maybe by dignity you refer to sex. My theory on why slut shaming is so ingrained in many women is because they see their sex as an asset to hold power and can't stand to see other's spend their assets and exercise that power.

      That sounded pretty misogynistic, didn't it? Well your comment is equally misandristic and I have to wonder if it's copypasta flamebait and if I just fell for it.

      --
      More Twoson than Cupertino
    25. Re:Alternatively by spazdor · · Score: 1

      You seem to be under the misapprehension that the OP said "Male nurses and educators more prone to misconduct." Check yourself.

      --
      DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
    26. Re:Alternatively by SeattleGameboy · · Score: 0

      She said 3 times harder, not 3 times more. If you cannot distinguish the difference, you are not trying hard enough...

    27. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most women will get into that process while evidently smaller percentage of men do - collectively. For many men that is not bad deal in personal gain terms.

  8. Re:Not exactly by Kittenman · · Score: 1

    Hard to read - you need to learn about to/too.

    And... isn't this akin to the Muslim world, who ask that the women cover themselves so as to not incite the lust of men? If men get excited, it's women's fault.

    Nonsense, of course - just in case you thought I was being serious.

    --
    "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
  9. What if it went the other way? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The opposite result would be unpublishable, and in an academic setting unspeakable. Can it be credible science if only one result was permissible?

    Posting as AC for the obvious reason.

    1. Re:What if it went the other way? by newcastlejon · · Score: 1

      Posting as AC for the obvious reason.

      Because you lack the courage of your convictions?

      --
      If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
    2. Re:What if it went the other way? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would the obvious reason be that you don't want obvious trolling to affect your karma?

      Given that I can only imagine your answer will be just as enlightening as your original assertion I may come to regret asking this but do you have any evidence of any kind to show that the opposite result would not be published?

    3. Re:What if it went the other way? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If someone faces danger when it is necessary we call it Courage, when it is not we call it stupidity.

    4. Re:What if it went the other way? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you call it when someone shows cowardice in the face of no real danger at all? This is just /. after all, where the worst one can expect from expressing an unpopular opinion is a -1?

    5. Re:What if it went the other way? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      You think so? You clearly don't know the Slashdot Secret Police, who will get everyone who ... wait, there are black helicopters approaching ... NO CARRIER

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    6. Re:What if it went the other way? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If there is no real danger at all, it isn't cowardice - its intelligence.

      If there is no material benefit to revealing oneself, one is an idiot if one does so.

  10. I believe it by lurker1997 · · Score: 1

    I believe it. And I don't care. I would also not be surprised that a higher percentage of male athletes use steroids. Cheating is an unfortunate byproduct of being competitive (although maybe an evolutionarily advantageous one).

    It does piss me off though to see garbage like

    They then compared the gender balance — or imbalance, in this case

    in the summary.

    1. Re:I believe it by ceoyoyo · · Score: 3, Informative

      The summary (and perhaps the article... I don't know, couldn't care less) is a study in sexism. It states the absolute percentage of male misconduct, not the rate. Then it uses the well known technique of stating the proportional change ("one-third of what one would expect") to make the difference seem really big.

      I certainly believe men are more prone to getting caught cheating in science. I think it's reasonable that they may even be more prone to doing it. But the summary reads like a cancer scare piece or a political message.

  11. Once again - what if it were reversed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Women Scientists More Prone to Misconduct"? - such a headline would immediately be met with cries of "PREJUDICE!!!! DISCRIMINATION!!!! SEXISM!!!!!"

    1. Re:Once again - what if it were reversed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess since that isn't the headline we will never actually know.

      Though it does seem rather telling that a post like yours shows up before any "I TOLD YOU MEN WERE EVIL!" man-haters got to the party.

    2. Re:Once again - what if it were reversed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, because this happens all the time - the powerful vagina lobby once again shuts down scientific research it considers unacceptable in its bid to wrest power from the patriarchal hegemony.

      Oh wait, no, I'm sorry, you're just a fucking retard, because that doesn't happen.

    3. Re:Once again - what if it were reversed? by Genda · · Score: 1

      The Vagina Lobby! you just made me blow peanuts out my nose... owww! So what exactly is a Vagina Lobby??? A place for Vaginas to go and wait while a Penis movie is playing? The all powerful vagina lobby... oh yeah baby! Like if that existed there'd be insured women's reproductive rights insurance before a man's right to fixing erectile dysfunction. But I don't see that, damn Vagina Lobby must be sleeping on the job! Friend, I don't know what planet you're from but women in the United States (at least) have about seven strikes against them, and to suggest for a second, that men have it worse in this society shows both a clear lack of empathy and a relationship to physical reality.

      Whats really happening is that women are actually JUST beginning to equalize things and men are complaining that they've lost a 10% slice from their 100% Control pie. I can see where that would be upsetting and completely unfair. Guys should have that 100% control. Only they don't, and eventually its gonna be 50/50. So rather than bemoaning a mythical lobby comprised of female sex organs (that is just so wrong on so many levels), perhaps you might consider working to ensure that the transfer of power serves everyone equally and that the men and women of the future actually get a fair shot at having a great life. Or you can piss and moan that its not 1950 any more. Good luck with that.

  12. Speeding Tickets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Women are more likely to get out of speeding tickets. You have to wonder how many misconducts of women were never reported.

    1. Re:Speeding Tickets by Genda · · Score: 1

      Show me a statistic, or you're just making crap up...

    2. Re:Speeding Tickets by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      A bit of googling came up with this page where some statistical data is given:

      The odds a driver stopped by the police for speeding will be ticketed are 1 in 1.37 (73%). Men fare slightly worse than women, with 1 in 1.34 (75%) male drivers getting tickets compared to 1 in 1.44 (69%) female drivers.

      The source of the numbers (revealed if you click on them on the web page) is given as:

      Durose MR. Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by Police, 2002. Bureau of Justice Statistics. June 2006.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    3. Re:Speeding Tickets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      100% of men pushing a feminist aGenda are trying to get in the pants of a feminist.

  13. Correlation with gender imbalance not gender by ZombieBraintrust · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I interprit this as follows. Gender imbalance in a field increases the likelyhood that that the biased for gender contains low quality employees. These people would not have their job in a fair job market. Likewise the other gender will contain higher quality people who were able to overcome the gender bias with exceptional skills.

    1. Re:Correlation with gender imbalance not gender by Dyinobal · · Score: 1

      Ya pretty much how I see it as well.

    2. Re:Correlation with gender imbalance not gender by ZombieBraintrust · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Another theory. Gender imbalance is a clue that some hiring is not based on skill and merit. One could test this by seeing if fields with greater gender imbalance have more ethical violations than similer fields with less imbalance.

    3. Re:Correlation with gender imbalance not gender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As long as we are just making baseless stuff up, how about women get hired just for being women in academia, so they have no incentive to cheat.

    4. Re:Correlation with gender imbalance not gender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another theory. Women and men are different and have different performance in different fields.

    5. Re:Correlation with gender imbalance not gender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The most intelligent comment I've ever read on the Internet.

  14. Just cheating/biasing or all forms of misconduct? by evanh · · Score: 1

    Misconduct is a very broad term.

    I know I've been accused of being hard nosed and stirring plenty of times. Had the written warnings and the likes.

    But I consider myself pretty honest, to the point of having loose lips.

  15. RTA y'all before you get your skivies in a bunch by HPHatecraft · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FTA

    The trend seems clear, but the authors did admit that "[w]e cannot exclude the possibility that females commit research misconduct as frequently as males but are less likely to be detected."

    I remember reading once that as a child Mao Tse-tung often witnessed his parents fight. He concluded the more effective tactics were the indirect ones used by his mother. These recollections lodged in his memory -- it is no mistake that the Art of War, of which many of the tactics described therein are predicated on deceptiveness, became the revolutionary army's bible.

  16. Re:Majority far more likely to collude than minori by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm willing to bet that this discrepancy is more a factor of groups vs. individuals than male vs. female. Aka "peer pressure" aka "everyone is doing it" etc.

    And the combination of
    1) certain research areas are predominantly male
    2) certain research areas misconduct is more profitable

    any non-trivial intersection is going to skew the results.

  17. Sample size makes data irrelevant. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Needs more than 73 cases, please.

  18. Equality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think in the interests of equality that more women should be compelled to acts of misconduct to make sure there is even representation.
    It would be just silly to suggest that efforts were made to reduce misconduct or that this was a frivolous story based on an extremely small sample.

  19. Well there you go by timeOday · · Score: 1

    That explains the gender pay gap and glass ceiling; it's easier to appear exceptional than to be exceptional, and one side is more willing to cheat :)

  20. Women make up 16% of scientists in industry by detain · · Score: 2

    This seems like a horrible comparison considering there are only 16% females in the scientific industry compared to men. Not only that but this is collected from data of known misconduct. I could easily see a female as being more likely to get away with scientific misconduct and thus they would not even be represented in this comparison. Used http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=2264&page=5 as reference for the 16% women scientist figure.

    --
    http://interserver.net/
    1. Re:Women make up 16% of scientists in industry by detain · · Score: 1

      Going back even farther to the starting point of the comparison, women made up only 3% of the industry (gradually growing to the current 16%).

      --
      http://interserver.net/
    2. Re:Women make up 16% of scientists in industry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you have a reference for stating that women make up 16% of the scientific industry, well done.

      Now do you have a reference for stating why or how women are magically able to misconduct themselves and not get caught when men are? I could just as easily make the baseless assertion that the men who were caught are proof that there are even more men who misconducted themselves but didn't get caught.

  21. Unscientific study by dehole · · Score: 2

    A remarkable 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, or 63 out of 72 individuals.

    Since the majority of the study consisted of men, they should normalize it based on the percentage of men in the study. Considering that only 72 individuals were examined, there isn't a scientific conclusion that can be drawn from this study.

    Since they didn't have enough females to make a male vs female comparison, they could have done it as "a percentage of scientists are prone to misconduct".

    1. Re:Unscientific study by tompaulco · · Score: 1

      Unscientific study
      And the results are inconsistent as well. 100% of the men and 100% of the women who performed this study did not follow the scientific method and did not collect a significant sample set and yet still published the results. For shame!

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    2. Re:Unscientific study by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      How is 100% of the population not a significant sample set?

      You want them to completely make some more up?

      Claiming that the total numbers are too small to produce meaningful results would be fine (whether or not that's the case), but claiming the sample size is too small when they used the entire population is ridiculous.

    3. Re:Unscientific study by cryptizard · · Score: 1

      How is that not a significant sample size? Since they said the misconduct rate for females was 1/3 of that for males, that implies that something like 35-40% of the scientists were females. 72 examples of misconduct is certainly enough to show a statistically significant difference between males and females.

  22. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And... isn't this akin to the Muslim world, who ask that the women cover themselves so as to not incite the lust of men? If men get excited, it's women's fault.

    Partly. But American society is fucked up in it's own way in this regard.

    Generally speaking the difference between how we tell men to attract women and "sexual harassment" comes down to whether or not she likes it when it comes from the guy doing it. Additionally men are often not taken seriously when the claim to have been harassed.

  23. Definitino of "Misconduct" is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    not stated clearly. They mentioned fraud, but as only one possible example.

    If you read the study, you see that they started by looking at retracted studies.

    In other words, this is specifically misconduct on published studies that caused those studies to be retracted.

    This is a huge difference between that and say sexual misconduct, or financial misconduct.

    Clarify your topics people.

  24. Real point: fraud leads to retractions by Zinho · · Score: 2

    The summary and its linked article are both unclear as to what "misconduct" is being discussed. Fortunately, clarity is available through the original paper:

    . . . we found that misconduct is responsible for most retracted articles and that fraud or suspected fraud is the most common form of misconduct. Moreover, the incidence of retractions due to fraud is increasing, a trend that should be concerning to scientists and non-scientists alike.

    The study is looking into why scientific papers are being retracted and what trends there are in the retractions.

    It's too bad that the summary was so generic it could have meant anything from nosepicking to marital infidelity to fabricating data. This is an interesting topic, and it's sad that the frequency of fraudulent publications is increasing.

    --
    "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
    1. Re:Real point: fraud leads to retractions by WGFCrafty · · Score: 1

      The summary and its linked article are both unclear as to what "misconduct" is being discussed. Fortunately, clarity is available through the original paper:

      . . . we found that misconduct is responsible for most retracted articles and that fraud or suspected fraud is the most common form of misconduct. Moreover, the incidence of retractions due to fraud is increasing, a trend that should be concerning to scientists and non-scientists alike.

      The study is looking into why scientific papers are being retracted and what trends there are in the retractions.

      It's too bad that the summary was so generic it could have meant anything from nosepicking to marital infidelity to fabricating data. This is an interesting topic, and it's sad that the frequency of fraudulent publications is increasing.

      Increasing? That's expected. the population of humans is doing the same thing. And even if it is not due to population size, detection could just be getting better.

  25. I conllude... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When males hit on women co-workers, the women always hates it. When women hits on men, the men almost always likes it. Hope they did not waist too much time telling us what we already know.

    1. Re:I conllude... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go to school.

    2. Re:I conllude... by Genda · · Score: 1

      Depends on how pretty the man or woman, and whether the hittee is straight or gay... but yeah, pretty much.

    3. Re:I conllude... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      for everyone who thinks the vagina lobby doesn't exits ....u need to meet my femi nazi sister in law

  26. Risk adverse by vlm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Did they correct for risk aversion? Not being adverse to cheating, but being adverse to entering a field where luck / risk plays a pretty big part in success which means more motivation for cheating?

    For example, lots more women in lib arts, where pretty much any result is acceptable. In the hard sciences, negative results are pretty much unacceptable, although in many ways they're just as important as positive results.

    Examples:

    Say you wanna prove women don't make as much money as men in field XYZ. Doesn't really matter what the result is, you get to publish, and in a publish or perish world, you win.

    Say you wanna methylate some weird hydrocarbon. And you just Freaking Cannot Do it. Perhaps because its impossible. Oh well I guess you fail and become homeless and live under a bridge. Or you could bend the rules just a tiny bit just this one time....

    I would stand by my lifetime observation that women are dramatically less tolerant of risk.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    1. Re:Risk adverse by girlintraining · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For example, lots more women in lib arts, where pretty much any result is acceptable. In the hard sciences, negative results are pretty much unacceptable, although in many ways they're just as important as positive results.

      I don't see how that makes any difference. It's a proven fact that men take risks even when there is not a clear advantage to doing so. In laymans terms, the "hold my beer" effect. While a competitive field may amplify this tendancy, numerous studies have shown it to be present regardless of circumstances and even present when detrimental to the individual/group being observed.

      I would stand by my lifetime observation that women are dramatically less tolerant of risk.

      Yes... They have to stay home and raise the kids, so if you run off and get yourself killed methylating hydrocarbons and lying to large audiences of men, the future of the human race remains assured. Whether this is due to innate differences in the sexes or because of social pressures can't be answered until our social expectations of men and women are equal. But this isn't just risk averse behavior -- women in general tend towards the average whereas men tend towards the extremes ... For every really intelligent man there's a really stupid one too, whereas those extremes are less common amongst women. Again, whether it's innate or socially constructed is a matter of serious debate presently (and has been for some time).

      As far as "negative results" in the hard sciences... You haven't done much hard science have you? Most of it consists of sitting in a cramped room with long rows of equipment and tables, fluorescent lights... and waiting. And waiting. and waiting some more until the machine goes "beep!" and tells you the 1,096th sample was a negative result, just like all the others. Look up the history of the lightbulb -- many hundreds of materials were tried before tungsten was found. WD-40... Whadda think WD 1 thru 39 was? Failures. If you can't tolerate failure, you're in the wrong line of work, bud. The post it note was the result of a failure. Duct tape? Failure! Persistence is what gets results in science, not lying, not risk taking, etc. Every major scientific advance has a huge pile of fail leading up to it.

      Every.

      Last.

      One.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    2. Re:Risk adverse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As far as "negative results" in the hard sciences... You haven't done much hard science have you?

      I don't think you have, either, or you wouldn't be so ignorant about what the problem is.

      Failures. If you can't tolerate failure, you're in the wrong line of work, bud.

      I can tolerate failure perfectly well. But the people who control the money and say who can continue doing hard science in the academia don't.

      When you apply for a university post-doc position, by far the most important criterion for selection is your publication history. No publications, no position. So, the research project you were in produced only negative results? Tough shit, your journal submissions will be rejected and you are out. This is not hypothetical. My girlfriend had the bad luck to do her doctorate studies in an applied maths group that tried to apply a method to a problem where it didn't work. It was a three-year project that produced a grand total of one conference article.

      She and the two other graduate students of the group managed to get the minimum necessary number of publications in other graduate projects and get the PhD in the end, but none of the three will ever get a funded post-doc position in the academia because the post-docs who got a better draw at the graduate project lottery have three or four times more publications than they have.

      Choose your professor wrong, get only negative results, don't get publications, and you get thrown out before you find the working formula for duct-it notes.

    3. Re:Risk adverse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ever tried publishing a scientific papers containing negative results? This is particularly bad for sciences relying on statistics: if 100 hundred studies are performed on the same subject, only the ones showing positive correlation will be published. Then, metastudies will only find the positive studies in the litterature.

    4. Re:Risk adverse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I might continue with another story, that of my sister-in-law. She got her PhD a couple of months ago and is now one of those academic untouchables and there's practically no chance that anyone will ever fund her again. Too few publications over way too long time.

      She was officially a PhD student for well over a decade. In practice all her time went to teaching and administrative work and it was expected that she would do the research on her spare time. That might have worked (it worked for me) except that at the time she already had two kids, so there wasn't any spare time.

      About a year ago she had got to the point where she had almost finished her thesis but was still one publication short of the official minimum. And the department run out of money. She got in a situation that she just had to get a publication out, fast, or never graduate. Unfortunately, the research data that they had collected didn't support their hypothesis.

      The odds of getting out a negative-result paper were rather slim, so they did what biologists tend do when put in such a situation: they pressed random buttons in the statistics package until one combination gave p less than 0.05 and wrote a paper out of that.

      Bad science? Definitely, but when the options are to either try to get a negative result paper published and most probably fail and never get the degree or to take one poor paper and get it, it's not too difficult decision to make. And who knows, perhaps they found a real effect. Too bad that the odds are that no one will ever try to replicate the experiment to verify it as it is a very specialized subject with no immediate commercial applications but with a difficult data gathering process (collect live insects of a particular species from many locations over a geographically wide area).

  27. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Go too school.

  28. FTFY by organgtool · · Score: 0

    New Headline: Male Scientists More Prone To Be Reported Of Misconduct

    Males are less likely to report misconduct of women either because we want to have sex with them or we don't want to appear weak and petty to our male co-workers and/or managers by resorting to snitching. That's not to say that we don't commit more misconduct, it just makes it harder to measure.

  29. Re:Not exactly by loufoque · · Score: 1

    Stop spreading your religious indoctrination.

  30. Why is this on Slashdot?! by Hermit+Squirrel · · Score: 1

    Seriously, why is this here? I imagine the same could be said for any another male dominated industry...if their study was on womans basketball you can sure as hell bet those figures would look better for us men, grrr..

    1. Re:Why is this on Slashdot?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And a gender breakdown of penalty yards in the NFL would also paint women in a very positive light...

  31. Re:Not exactly by Murdoch5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your right! If a woman gives a man a pat on the butt and the man complains in 99% of all cases nothing will happen. If that man even looks at a woman with subjective eyes then he can be fired or suspended from work. Women have been able to create a system where men can't even look at them subjectively but they can do almost anything and get away with it.

  32. Wrong conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are more male scientists than female ones. So its not that males are more prone to misconduct, its to do with there are just more males to misbehave. If you have 500 males and 50 females and count misconduct there will be more males misbehaving just because there are more of them.

    Not to mention I work in the medical field with the majority being women and I found women can misbehave all the like and never really get in trouble for it. Like sexual harassement. Ive had numerous women I work with do things that could be classified as sexual harrasement but no one says a thing, but if I did any one of those things then Id be infront of HR faster than you can say "fired before a lawsuit happens".

    1. Re:Wrong conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "There are more male scientists than female ones. So its not that males are more prone to misconduct, its to do with there are just more males to misbehave. If you have 500 males and 50 females and count misconduct there will be more males misbehaving just because there are more of them."

      They already took that into account and their conclusion is based on the fact that there was a higher percentage of men in the misconduct group than there is in the overall fields. From the summary: "The number of women in that group was one-third of what one would expect based on female representation in the life sciences"

      "Like sexual harassement. Ive had numerous women I work with do things that could be classified as sexual harrasement but no one says a thing"

      Then stick up for yourself and report them. All these people who complain that women get away with sexual harrassment and men can't, I've yet to see one of them even TRY to avail themselves of systems that are put in place to stop sexual harrassment.

  33. Re:Not exactly by Murdoch5 · · Score: 1

    .... I never mentioned religion, but good job extracting meaning.

  34. Re:Not exactly by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Seriously, you need to get laid. That way, you'd stop getting overly excited whenever something without a beard walks around.

    Although, I do understand that with your kind of attitude, getting laid by any self-respecting woman could be a problem.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  35. This... by Synerg1y · · Score: 1

    is the dumbest study I've read on Slashdot to date. Congrats. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50510582/ns/health-mens_health/#.UQBxUWdBqrg/ is random better news. Also, male doctors have a higher rate of sexual misconduct than female doctors, study pending.

  36. Re:Not exactly by Murdoch5 · · Score: 1

    The post had nothing to do with not having a girl friend and in fact by your very response you seem to want to objectify women mentally, so by that very post your part of the issue. Everything must be on even playing field, the second you allow one side a handicap you are not longer comparing apples to apples and hence a study or test no longer has meaningful results.

  37. Ummmm Null Hypothesis Anyone? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It looked to me from the article that P=0.24.

    That is really not a reasonable basis to draw all these conclusions from.

  38. Re:Not exactly by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    By your own admission, you have problems with women around you. I find it unlikely they that they have the same problem with you. I've just stated that the problem is on your side and yours to solve.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  39. "Misconduct"? by TangoMargarine · · Score: 2

    After having actually read TFA, I still don't know what they mean by "misconduct." Are we talking academic, i.e. falsifying data or plagiarizing, or sexual misconduct, or what? The article carefully avoids ever joining an adjective to it.

    Because come on...in general, does anybody believe males if they report being accosted?

    --
    Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    1. Re:"Misconduct"? by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      The title of the paper is "Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct", surely you can work it out from that?

      Why would you read a second hand article when there's a direct link to the paper?

    2. Re:"Misconduct"? by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1

      Oh. Then why bother even linking to another article linking to it?

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    3. Re:"Misconduct"? by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      Because the submitter is an idiot?
      Because the submitter wants to "give credit" to where he found the information?
      Because the submitter wants to encourage such articles by upping the view counts on that page?
      Because the submitter felt guilty for plagiarizing that article for his summary?
      Because the submitter thinks the article adds something of value?

      You'd have to ask the submitter to actually find out of course.

  40. obProfessorFarnsworth by Greyfox · · Score: 1

    Oh sure! Everyone's ALL FOR preserving Hitler's Brain, but the moment you try to put it into the body of a great white shark, then all of a sudden you've gone TOO FAR!

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  41. Flatter bell curve for males by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    In almost any study of gender behavior, males tend to fall on the extremes of both ends (the good and bad). We soar higher, but also crash more. Males score the very top in math, but also tend to fill up the very bottom. Male behavior just plain seems to be more varied than females, at least when objectively measured.

    It could be because over the course of human evolution, male roles have been more varied than females such that nature gambles more with the male brain so that males can find or create different niches and/or to avoid direct competition with other males.

    1. Re:Flatter bell curve for males by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 1

      Or it could be thatg men just naturally push harder at obstacles because they've got balls.

    2. Re:Flatter bell curve for males by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      evil balls?

  42. That's a research paper? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    It's 3 pages long, the last page is half references, the first page is a title page, the second page is half abstract.
    It's got one page of content.
    It fails to account for gender ratio in each of the job categories. It's not even mentioned other than to say it is comparable with other areas of science.

  43. Re:Not exactly by Murdoch5 · · Score: 0
    I'm just going to break down what I wrote because either you misunderstood it or you don't know how to understand a normal post but in either case I'll help you out.

    The first post

    Any woman who wears a shirt which is to tight, to showing, to low. A skirt which is to short, to tight. If she wears make up or is hot, is just as guilty as any man. So well you can believe that lie it's not entirely true.

    I never mention myself or hint that I'm talking about myself or even hint at any relation to me or me not having a girl friend. The entire direction of the post would state that in general any woman who does that is as guilty as any man.

    Second Post

    I never said anything about the Muslim world. Second of all if to vs too causes you hardship reading then that is your own issue.

    If a woman makes her self all "sexy" or "hot" then she is misconducting herself. If I enter a work place and I have to deal with beautiful women who doll themselves up then I'm put in a situation where my body is being played with even though I might never act. Face it, the second a woman enters the work place dressed up any more then she needs to be she is misconducting herself.

    In the same right, if I dress myself up, if I put my self in a state where I know I'm playing with the females around me I'm misconducting myself. I highly doubt this study took into account the fact then women make themselves look good on purpose and in doing so they have misconducted themselves because they want a reaction, which they achieve.

    Again I never mention myself directly, I use the term "I" to mean any man which is clear to anyone who can understand simple English. Clearly what is meant to be implied by the post is that I'm not targeting the Muslim culture and that any woman who dresses up or any man who dresses up is causing misconduct. The post really if read correctly is very general in use of terms and very general in overall concepts.

    Third Post

    The post had nothing to do with not having a girl friend and in fact by your very response you seem to want to objectify women mentally, so by that very post your part of the issue. Everything must be on even playing field, the second you allow one side a handicap you are not longer comparing apples to apples and hence a study or test no longer has meaningful results.

    Very clear that I've pointed out the last two posts didn't involve me and that the study isn't realistic because it's not testing all the angles. I mention myself once but only to clear up the fact that you somehow gained a false understanding that I didn't have a girl friend.

    Amazing attempt at learning to read but you didn't really get the point I guess.

  44. Women don't do science. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of course women behave better. That's their only hope to compete with male domination.

  45. Mad Scientists... by NormAtHome · · Score: 1

    At first glance I thought the title said "Mad Scientists More Prone To Misconduct" and thought this could be an interesting article.

  46. The real question by Samuraid · · Score: 1

    The real question is: What were the genders of the researchers who posted this study to begin with? Maybe the study itself is a paradox, or at least self-fulfilling.

    --
    if ($question !~ m/bb|[^b]{2}/i) { die(); }
  47. sample size, anyone? by tfocker4 · · Score: 1

    If we're to argue that 9 females is enough to judge the entire population by, then we might want to tell every statistician that they're wrong about, well, everything.

  48. News at 10 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Men dick about more than women, who knew!?

  49. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The men in power don't want to represent men as a gender. It appears most of the women in power do want to represent women as a gender, making for an entirely one-sided conflict where only one side is fighting in the first place. Your point is invalid.

  50. Re:Not exactly by Genda · · Score: 2

    Excuse me, but I've been in business settings now for nearly 40 years... I've never, ever seen a woman pat a man's ass, wait... there was a pediatrician and the man was about 14 months old... but that's it. Guys, face it. Take responsibility for it. Just own the simple fact that testosterone is an amazingly powerful chemical. Here's a trick, give estrogen to a biological male... sexual impulse goes BYE BYE. Give testosterone to a biological female, she becomes a freaking sex fiend. Its not your fault, testosterone is a way powerful chemical. But for the love of Jebus don't try to suggest that there is a double standard here. Women seldom stalk men, the other way can't be said. 99.99999% of all sexual harassment is committed by men, and the woman who commits the 0.00001% is hyper testosteronal, uber competitive and scares the men around her every bit as much as alpha males scare the women around him.

    If you haven't bothered watching men talk into women's breasts like they must have microphones in the nipples, or the Pavlovian drooling that so many men have in the presence of women with large mammaries, then you can't honestly judge how it feels to be a woman who feels like men are stripping her naked with their eyes. Its disconcerting and terribly uncomfortable outside the bedroom. I do understand, and I'm not belittling men. I'm just saying, rather than spending all your energy defending your ideological turf, stop for a moment and put yourself in someone else's pumps, to see what it must be like to get all that unwanted attention. SHOW A TINY BIT OF EMPATHY.

  51. Re:Not exactly by Genda · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oh yeah, because everyone knows that women scientists like to work in their lingerie. Women in the middle east wear black gunny sacks, and the men still piss all over themselves to get a glimpse of fingernail... dude, its your hormones, your erection, your behavior, blaming other people because you have poor self control is like blaming fast food because it tastes good. That's the way its made, welcome to biology. Now take responsibility for your behavior.

  52. Re:Not exactly by Murdoch5 · · Score: 1

    You have a valid point, how ever it was an example. The point is if a woman did touch a man I highly doubt anything would happen even if the man complained. I'm not going to blame chemicals or nature I'm just commenting on the fact of the matter.

  53. Re:Not exactly by Murdoch5 · · Score: 1

    Ya ...... I love seeing responses which contain NONE of the points I mentioned. I don't even understand your point because it's based off what you didn't read and couldn't assume. I"m literally amazed you pulled that reply out of no where.

  54. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, we men have it so hard.

    Oh please. The fact that women have it harder (now and in the past) doesn't mean that the problems that men face are not problems. It's such ridiculous logic that I hope I'm completely wrong and that's not what you really meant.

  55. Re:Not exactly by loufoque · · Score: 1

    Your extremely misogynistic views as well as your poor usage of English suggests you're an Islamist.

  56. Re:Not exactly by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

    I knew a woman who complained of sexual harassment when she was asked why she became an engineer. Some are just too sensitive.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  57. I detect a gender gap! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Quick, we need to allocate funds to more female scientists for misconduct to level the playing field.

  58. Re:Not exactly by Kittenman · · Score: 1

    Oh yeah, because everyone knows that women scientists like to work in their lingerie. Women in the middle east wear black gunny sacks, and the men still piss all over themselves to get a glimpse of fingernail... dude, its your hormones, your erection, your behavior, blaming other people because you have poor self control is like blaming fast food because it tastes good. That's the way its made, welcome to biology. Now take responsibility for your behavior.

    Better put than I managed - thanks Genda...

    --
    "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
  59. Nothing to add to scientific misconduct discussion by SB9876 · · Score: 1

    I just wanted to say that I fervently hope that Ferric Fang goes by the nickname 'Iron'.

  60. Re:Not exactly by Murdoch5 · · Score: 1

    This isn't a formal proof read essay or document, it's a quick post.

  61. Re:Not exactly by Alomex · · Score: 0

    The men in power don't want to represent men as a gender. It appears most of the women in power do want to represent women as a gender,

    You are so right, which is why every time they have a chance they appoint women to all positions of power. One can hardly find a man in Obama's cabinet, for example.

    Everywhere you look among the powerful women are overrepresented. It's a tragedy, I'm telling ya'

  62. Re:Not exactly by Genda · · Score: 2

    Okay, let me put the dots a wee bit closer so you can follow the line. Women aren't meat. Women aren't things. They are fully functional, distinct human beings complete with rights. If the law allows a woman to legally walk done the street buck naked, she has the right to do so without you attacking her because you refuse to put your libido on a short leash. A woman's choice of social presentation is not a pass on your ability to function in a social manner. Sorry. I know its not fair, but you're the one with the outtie and keeping in check is YOUR responsibility, not the lady's. Is that clearer, do you understand now.

  63. Re:Not exactly by Alomex · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh, please all you want. Men do have problems, but being treated worse than women is not one of them.

  64. With apologies to the bible as literature crowd... by rmdingler · · Score: 1

    Mates were taken by the best of the hunters and gatherers for thousands of generations before the cathode ray tube was available. Taken, by the males who could survive and provide. Nature saw fit that the male's predisposition to more muscle mass trumps the females primary responsibility as child-bearer ..... different advantages that magnified in a two parent family. Pre-civilized society, the man's physical advantage was a tremendous opportunity to dominate the weaker matriarch. Physically inferior, the woman had to work twice as hard on the intangibles: cunning, strategy, and treachery. That said, a man's reputation as a risk taker is well documented. Consult any insurance industry actuarian.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  65. Male * commit more misconduct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and the inverse of misconduct...whatever that is.
    more conduct in general.

  66. Re:Not exactly by Murdoch5 · · Score: 0

    Okay but your still missing the point that I never said anything along those lines, I'm still completely confused on how your getting that meaning out of what I wrote. How ever I'll give you another chance to explain but this time using some guidance one how to find the information.

    Women aren't meat. - Please find where i called the female gender meat or another high protein based medium for consumption

    Women aren't things - Along the same line please quote the line where I said women are things.

    They are fully functional, distinct human beings complete with rights - Please show me the quoted line where I said women don't have rights and should live as slaves or find me an exact line that will show where I completely pointed out the lack of rights I think women should have.

    If the law allows a woman to legally walk done the street buck naked, she has the right to do so without you attacking her because you refuse to put your libido on a short leash - Again a complete wrong assumption as I never mentioned my libido, I never said if I see a naked or seductively dressed woman I would pull out my dick and show her a lesson. I never said anything ever remotely hinting at the fact that if I saw a woman naked I would attack her and I certainly never said or hinted at the fact I would act inappropriately.

    A woman's choice of social presentation is not a pass on your ability to function in a social manner - And for the last time you can't find me saying that I would act on this because I wouldn't, it is still in misconduct for anyone to put themselves in a situation where they want to get a reaction which they know can cause someone discomfort.

    Now next time you post back how about you put one second into considering how your going to respond, what you've clearly shown is that you have no comprehension on how to understand or interpret the English language. You've made clearly wrong assumptions about the contents of what I said and taken everything completely out of context to the extreme. So how about you fucking connect the dots of your seriously mentally disabled head and figure out what I said and how to read it.

  67. Mad? by Beat+The+Odds · · Score: 2

    Am I the only one that read the title as "Mad Scientists More Prone To Misconduct" and said to myself "Duh?"

  68. Re:Not exactly by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 1

    So you're not belittling men, you're just claiming that they simply can't help it because of their inferior chemical addled minds? That's almost word for word the same "logic" used by patronizing racists to justify their belief that blacks are mentally inferior.

    The chance of a male or female to be sexually assaulted during their life is 1 in 6 for both both genders. Related to that women are more likely to abuse, more likely to commit abuse, commit more severe abuse on average, and to use a weapon than men. The reason you see such disparity in crime statistics is because the entire legal and judicial system is so absurdly tilted in favor of women that it's practically a kangaroo court; in many areas a man can't even be considered a victim of certain crimes because of how the laws are worded, and in the rare case a woman is prosecuted (assuming the rarer still case that she's actually convicted) women recieve incredibly disproportionately lenient sentencing compared to men.

    As for all that "unwanted attention"... have you actually ever seen women in the real world? Women are no better than men, they just get a free pass because men are expected to like it or shut up.

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  69. Re:Not exactly by Alomex · · Score: 1

    The chance of a male or female to be sexually assaulted during their life is 1 in 6 for both both genders.

    [citation needed]

    In fact the sources I can find say a woman is about 5x more likely to be sexually assaulted among population 15 and over.

    About the same ratio holds for sexual harassment at work.

  70. Re:Not exactly by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 1

    You're going to ask for a citation in the most pretentious asshole way possible, while claiming you've found contradicting sources, and not provide those sources yourself? Let me take a guess, your sources also follow the trend of increasing absurdity by claiming 90%+ underreporting rates, right?

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  71. Re:Not exactly by Alomex · · Score: 1

    [citation needed]

    is a rather standard way to ask for references in online discussions. For example:

    Usage in Discussion

    Since gaining its catchphrase status, "citation needed" has been used in online discussion forums to humorously point out biased or baseless statements made by others. The xkcd forum thread that resulted from the 2007 comic strip provides early examples of the [citation needed] within forums, e.g., from one response:

            Just think of how this could apply to memes?

            So I herd u leik Mudkips? [citation needed]
            I shot a man in Reno. [citation needed]
            ONE CAN NOT SIMPLY WALK INTO MORDOR. [citation needed]

    Examples of Usage in Forums

            Slashdot: example
            Digg: example
            Something Awful: example

    At this point the standard thing to do would be to comment on the fact that you must be a new user here, but not using quite those words.

    p.s. and you still haven't provided references, since your numbers are clearly made up.

  72. Re:Not exactly by markass530 · · Score: 1

    right after you show me your tits?

  73. Consider the field by Dutchmaan · · Score: 1

    It's a very male dominated field of course women are going to be crossing every "t" and dotting every "i". Take any field where a particular gender is going to have a hard time as a peer and I can guaranDAMNtee you that gender will have a lower rate of misconduct.

  74. Re:Not exactly by epyT-R · · Score: 0

    Well if his explanation isn't excusable, than neither is the feminist position of being 'objectified' by males.

  75. sample size? by slashmydots · · Score: 2

    A remarkable 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, or 63 out of 72 individuals, or not large enough of a sample size to mean anything.

    1. Re:sample size? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This wasn't a random sample, though. This was every case of scientific misconduct that was reported to this particular body. It isn't a statistic in that sense, it was the real percentage. Just like the outcome of an election isn't a statistic, it's the actual vote count.

  76. Re:Not exactly by epyT-R · · Score: 0

    Women have their own behavior and set of socio-sexual dynamics. It's just that they aren't criminalized like mens'. Women today belittle, manipulate, and yes, stalk, in their own way, men and/or their trappings of power or property. If a guy complains about it, he's told to man up and take it, or worse, let her win, else he be labeled a misogynist. Of course, when she complains, he's automatically assumed to be a dickhead and reprimanded/fired, and possibly ridiculed publicly. There are so many layers of hypocritical fallacy about this subject nowadays, it's nearly impossible to talk about these negative aspects, nevermind determine unbiased fact. This is why political-correctness is truly evil.

    As far as guys like you go, it's time to lay off the feminist kool-aid for a bit. Unfortunately, the insecurity of today's 'men' make them so desperate to 'win' as many women as possible, they figure the only way to win their favor is to suck up to them with biased law and cultural expectation. These guys selling the rest of us out are the ones being used now, and feminists are laughing all the way to the bank.

    You want empathy? More like you're demanding others join you in your stockholm syndrome. You're a fool.

  77. Re:Not exactly by epyT-R · · Score: 0

    Whenever someone trots out 'studies', the sources are usually politically biased such that the whole proof chain is dubious at best. Who funded these 'studies' and what are their political positions? Did they have any social motivations beyond telling as much truth as possible? Was the science sound? Most times we can't even answer these questions, and the presenters dont' bother telling us. Laziness or calculation? Who knows..

    Hell, if we all asked these questions of ourselves every time the media trots out a 'study' as 'proof' of a need for some political change, a lot of them would go up in the smoke they're made from.

  78. Yeah, right... by denzacar · · Score: 3, Informative

    There used to be strong religious taboos and social morays that kept people faithful, but after the sexual revolution of the 60s and cheap and effective birth control, the gloves are now pretty much off.

    ...and the youngins used to respect their elders.

    Giacomo Casanova was a real guy, you know?
    And the fact that the ten commandments have to mention infidelity TWICE, while murder only once, indicates how much of that was going around (and kept going around) WAY before "the 60s".

    Actually, there are some excellent articles on primate behavior that suggest there are many reasons for infidelity among both sexes. Its not to hard to figure out why women are sneakier... think people, men outweigh women by 50% or more and have twice the muscle mass. If your spouse can kill you with their bare hands,you tend to unconsciously avoid circumstances where that behavior might be expressed. Duh! Many women are taught from an early age to marry a good provider, but when Mr. Oh My Gawd shows up... stuff happens.

    Why go down to the biological level or even psychological level? Women ARE better at social interaction. That's it.
    Human relationships (including love triangles, rectangles etc.) are literally exactly that - any relationship between two or more individuals.
    End of story.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
    1. Re:Yeah, right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      * Why go down to the biological level or even psychological level? Women ARE better at social interaction. That's it.

      No.. they aren't. Women are better at a type of social interaction revolving around one or two people... they aren't better at maintaining large networks of colleagues. In fact, men are much better at that.

      The truth is that women's "insightfulness" is wildly over-estimated. They tend to think they can read more information in small observances than is actually possible... every women is an amateur piss-poor psychoanalyst who likes to think she's Sigmund Freud. This is what leads to melodrama and catfights when groups of women work together.

      * End of story

      Not really... the type of relationships needed to manage large firms and network are the ones men are demonstrably and scientifically proven to be better at.

    2. Re:Yeah, right... by denzacar · · Score: 1

      OK, maybe I should have elaborated on that a bit more.

      No.. they aren't. Women are better at a type of social interaction revolving around one or two people... they aren't better at maintaining large networks of colleagues. In fact, men are much better at that.

      I'm guessing that you are thinking about the Dunbar's number and its relation to the volume of neocortex, which should, perhaps, maybe, be a little bigger in men.
      Thing is, on average, Dunbar's number still boils down to about 150, while varying among men as well as among women.
      But regardless of that - that's NOT social interaction in itself.
      That's the number of social interactions with and among other people, a person can handle in their head without additional effort.

      And again, that's a biological thing. Hardware.
      What women have is better SOFTWARE for social interaction. Or training in societal and cultural norms.

      Or to be more precise, women have OK software which they keep upgrading through life - most men have to change theirs completely after puberty.
      Or adolescence.
      Or whenever they start interacting with the world outside their little pack and their local playground.
      Almost everything a boy learns about human interaction goes out the window when he goes to college, or gets a regular job, or joins the army.
      All those places have an organizational structure that does not revolve around the fact how "tough" or "bad" or "cool" or "crazy" you are among your peers.
      Unless they plan to have a career in crime - there the rules of the playground still apply, and they need only be slightly patched for prison.

      On the other hand, some of the things drilled into girl's mind in our culture, in most cases, don't ever change. They just get upgraded.
      Stuff like being a wife, mother, taking care of the family...
      Actual expectations and results may change through life, but in most cases, things they were taught in kindergarten still apply later in life.

      How many boys are constantly being reminded and cheered on to be husbands and fathers and providers for the family?
      Instead they are brought up being taught they'll be professional athletes, heroes (preferably Batman), chick-magnets, all-around tough guys...
      Most of them will end up being none of the above.

      Not really... the type of relationships needed to manage large firms and network are the ones men are demonstrably and scientifically proven to be better at.

      As I can't say that I've heard of that before from any reliable source, I'll reserve my judgment on that subject until you provide citations for those proves.

      --
      Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
    3. Re:Yeah, right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      * I'm guessing that you are thinking about the Dunbar's number and its relation to the volume of neocortex, which should, perhaps, maybe, be a little bigger in men

      I'm referring to the studies done showing how women and men interact with others of their gender - how that interaction style is tailored to the different needs that that males/females evolved for. and that kept the species alive.

      And BTW, all interaction comes down to hardware - or do you believe in magical souls?

      * Almost everything a boy learns about human interaction goes out the window when he goes to college, or gets a regular job, or joins the army.

      I'm guessing you haven't known any women other than your mother; you were an only child, and had no friends. And you've just been brought up by TV stereotypes and feminist propaganda.

  79. Sic semper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scientists will be scientists.

  80. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let me get this straight. Okay, sexual assault? Never appropriate. Your statistics are way off (it isn't 5 decimal points). The male proportion even neglecting differences in reporting and conviction isn't THAT high, but what your saying qualitatively is valid. Males are the main offenders by far.

    But, looking is some kind of offense? Noticing? Seriously? It's "disconcerting and terribly uncomfortable" because someone regards someone else as beautiful and looks? Yes, you really are belittling men, because you are setting an impossible standard for something where women clearly provide just as much attention to men as the other way around, yet the standard for "offense" is ridiculously different. If a man said "Those women were checking out my ass", people would laugh. It would be embarassing for a man to even try to bring up a case of harassment on any grounds like that. By contrast, for a women, such a claim would probably be taken very seriously, even if there was no intent on the part of the man to do any harm, and even if there wasn't any sexual interest or intention. As for how often it is done, I don't think the statistics on "men checking out women" or "women checking out men" visually are very different at all.

    What are men supposed to do? You try NOT looking at any part of someone of the opposite sex (or whatever sex you find attractive) below the neck. Try that for everyone you meet in the course of a day. Good luck regardless of gender unless you happen to be entirely asexual.

    And I've got news for you. You may think having large mammaries is some kind of eye magnet, but for some people it isn't that at all. Personally, I find natural red hair rather attractive regardless of mammary status. Beauty has a WIDE diversity, and it would be very hard to judge whether any notice is genuinely of the sexual kind or simply a false positive. I'm sure plenty of women have wrongly thought some man was looking at them in a lustful way, but in fact the man was gay. Likewise I'm sure there are plenty of women that are homosexual but whose attentive notice of a fellow woman's appearance was probably not regarded as sexual at all. It's just not that easy. And if you think it's easy for men (or anyone else) to easily perceive whether attention is unwanted or not, no, it isn't. You need to speak up about it. The vast majority of men will get a clue and respect those wishes. And I don't quite believe that women truly don't want any kind of attention. I think what they usually want is the ability to be very selective about which men they chose to accept attention from (i.e. only from the men they regard as "hot"). How men are supposed to discern which situation applies to them is a constant challenge without adequate feedback. I mean, for some things it's obvious (some types of attention is never wanted), but for a lot of other things it just isn't. Setting the "attention" to zero and expecting men to achieve that is ridiculous. Women don't, and even if you try it's pretty tough to achieve it because of inevitable mistaken perceptions.

    Finally, if we've really reached the point where simple physical beauty, in whatever form, can not be noticed or admired at all without deeply and inappropriately entangling it with sexuality, then it's a pretty sad commentary on the world. Just because I may notice a woman is beautiful does not mean I'm "stripping her naked with my eyes". I'm mature enough to know the difference between admiring a work of art hanging in a gallery and wanting to take it off the wall and home with me, for which I would definitely have to seek permission. That also doesn't mean the moment I look at a work of art in a gallery and appreciate it, the police should come and arrest me because of the possibility I was thinking about taking it.

    Empathy? Yes. I try, and I apologize on behalf of those of my gender who don't, or who aren't very sucessful with their attempts. But don't set impossible goals that I do not think women can achieve consistently either, unless you can say you've never looked a little too long at some cute guy's ass, or whatever it is about your favorite gender that turns you on.

  81. Actually, that is an example of cherry picking... by denzacar · · Score: 1

    ...and confirmation bias.
    Also, the article is VERY light on data and heavy on rationalization for its theories.

    But let's address the "scientific/engineering academia" issue first.

    An overwhelming 88% of faculty members committing
    misconduct were male, compared with 69% of postdocs, 58%
    of students, and 42% of other research personnel (Fig. 1). The
    male-female distribution of postdocs and students corresponds
    with the gender distribution of postdocs and students in science
    and engineering fields (4).

    "88% of male faculty members" is clearly NOT a trend.
    In all other cases male-female distribution of misconduct MATCHES the general male-female distribution.
    If anything, this indicates that faculty members in general are held to higher standards of scrutiny.
    Or that students and postdocs are held to lower standards than the faculty members - if you want to look at it that way.

    So, no. Neither men nor women commit more misconduct than "their average fair share".

    Now... the other thing.
    This is a clear case of a study NOT finding results it went looking for, so instead it changes the goal.
    I.e. Percentages match in the case of "all science and engineering fields" - let' narrow the field to only "life sciences".
    Whoomp! There it is! There are more misconducts among males in general, than there are males in life sciences.
    Ergo - Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct.

    Hold on a second... I do not think it means what they think it means.

    There are 58% of male students committing misconduct, but only about 45% of students in life sciences are male?
    There are 69% of male postdocs committing misconduct, but only about 61% of postdocs in life sciences are male?
    There are a whooping 88% of male faculty members committing misconduct, but only about 71% of faculty members in life sciences are male?

    Where does any of that say how many male (or female) LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCHERS (of any academic level) have committed misconduct? NOWHERE.

    They are taking the entire set A, extracting a subset B out of it, then comparing the sizes of incidences of characteristic C in the entire set TO THE SIZE OF THE SUBSET B.
    Not to the incidence of C in the subset B.

    They are presenting us that Ca > B.
    NOT that Ca => Cb NOR that Ca <= Cb.
     
    Meanwhile, they are claiming that Cb > Ca.

    I.e. "Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct."

    Oh and...
    Those 72 cases (9 of them women) of misconduct in academia, women being only one third of their "predicted number among life sciences faculty"?
    Life sciences faculty has male-female distribution of about 70% to 30%, right?
    70% of 72 people is 50 people.
    88% is 63 people.

    That's 13 more guys "then there should be", or 13 less gals, when using the faulty math comparing 88% overall numbers with unrelated numbers in life sciences.
    Compared to "ALL science and engineering" distribution of 74-26%, or 53-19 people - those 63 guys are 10 more guys "than there should be".

    You wanna know how many "science, engineering, and health doctorate holders employed full time in academic institutions" article's main source claims there were in 2006?

    72.500 females, 161.200 males, 233.700 total.
    Out of that, 39,3%, 30,9% and 33,5%, respectfully, were employed in life sciences.
    Or 28492, 49810, and 78289.

    10 more guys "than there should be". See? There they are, right there.
    Forty-nine thousand eight hundred AND TEN.
    Assholes.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  82. Re:Not exactly by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 2

    No, asking for sources or *gasp* investing a little of your own intellectual effort of your own and providing your own sources contradicting the original claim was standard. [Citation Needed] has pretty much always been one step shy of trolling at best, especially since it's most often used as a drive by or as part of the "accuse the other guy of what you're guilty of" trick...

    Like yourself, for example. You start out with [citation needed] before claiming you had sources proving something else. Sources that you didn't provide then and still haven't provided now, even though you've expanded to borderline ad hominem claiming my "numbers are clearly made up" despite it being literally impossible to NOT find proof they aren't IF you'd done so much as a Feeling Lucky google search for "one in six male sexual assault".

    As for your claims that women are 5x as likely to be victims of sexual assault... There's a little thing called a "sanity test". Basically you run a rough working of the numbers and see if the result is either definitively impossible or otherwise sufficiently implausible as to warrant further investigation. Now you claim your still undisclosed sources place a woman's odds of sexual assault over the age of 15 at 5x that of a man's, that means either women's odds are much higher than the odds I gave for men or men's odds are much lower than what I provided. The latter flat out fails the sanity test without even needing to think about it because the rate of confirmed crimes is already high enough to support a 1 in 6 rate of victimization for men, which leaves the former.

    If a mans odds are 1 in 6 (ie ~16.66%), which you're about to be literally BURIED in the proof of regardless of the previous sanity test, that would make a woman's 5x greater odds ~83.3%. In other words it would be virtually a statistical certainty that every single woman in the united states would at some point in her life be sexually assaulted. As before the numbers completely fail the sanity test unless you also follow the claim that upwards of 90% of all sexual assaults are completely unreported and never discovered... but THAT in turn completely fails yet another sanity test: the nation's population simply cannot support the absolute number of offenses that would be required to satisfy those probabilities. With the confirmed facts about condom use and physical violence it's just not possible for that quantity of sexual assaults to be taking place in utter secrecy, it'd basically be the sexual assault equivalent of living in Buffy The Vampire Slayer or renting a room in Halliwell Manor and never noticing anything supernatural.

    Now if you'd like to rejoin the real world, where we don't have entire suburbs dedicated to 24/7 mass raping women in utter secrecy, here are some ACTUAL facts:

    Dube, S.R., Anda, R.F., Whitfield, C.L., et al. (2005). Long-term consequences of childhood sexual abuse by gender of victim. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 28, 430–438.
    Briere, J. & Elliot, D.M. (2003). Prevalence and psychological sequelae of self-reported childhood physical and sexual abuse in a general population sample of men and women. Child Abuse & Neglect, 27, 1205–1222.
    Holmes, W.C., & Slap, G.B. (1998). Sexual abuse of boys: Definition, prevalence, correlates, sequelae, and management. Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 280, 1855–1862.
    Lisak, D., Hopper, J. & Song, P. (1996). Factors in the cycle of violence: Gender rigidity and emotional constriction. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9, 721–743.
    Finkelhor, D., Hotaling, G., Lewis, I. A., & Smith, C. (1990). Sexual abuse in a national survey of adult men and women: Prevalence, characteristics, and risk factors. Child Abuse & Neglect, 14, 19–28.
    Holmes, G.R., Offen, L., & Waller, G. (1997). See n

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  83. Hmmm by StripedCow · · Score: 1

    a new analysis by three microbiologists

    Men or women?

    --
    If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
  84. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, giving estrogen to a biological male does a whole bunch of nothing, because dihydrotestosterone steamrolls over estrogen, and the body will compensate excess estrogen by producing more DHT. The excess DHT on the other hand, once the estrogen is gone, will make the person more aggressive, trigger acne and hair loss and enhance sexual drive.
    So your trick is moot.

    Lowering testosterone levels, on the other hand, will indeed destroy male libido. Compensating the lowered testosterone with estrogen will instead create female libido, which is different from male libido.
    It's not that females don't have a sexual drive (as you seem to suggest), it's just rather different in nature - less outwards directed and less aggressive.

  85. And so what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A Woman without clothes is nude.

    A Man without clothes is naked.

    A woman with pert breasts is alluring.

    A man with pert breasts is disturbing.

    A woman witth big muscles is a turn-off.

    A man with big muscles is a turn-on.

    A woman with a beard is a freak.

    A man with a beard is manly.

    What is accepted on one sex is not accepted on another.

    If you saw a woman with a dick, would you go "Lovely!" or "Eugh!"?

    1. Re:And so what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you saw a woman with a dick, would you go "Lovely!" or "Eugh!"?

      I would rush to slashdot to tell all the people that we were wrong, god does exist, and our god is an awesome god.

    2. Re:And so what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A woman witth big muscles is a turn-off.

      A man with big muscles is a turn-on.

      How big is "big"? Because I gotta say, some of those male professional body builders are just "ew".

    3. Re:And so what? by Applekid · · Score: 1

      A Woman without clothes is nude.

      A Man without clothes is naked.

      Offtopic, but I had always referred to the difference between nude and naked as context. One gets nude to pose for a camera or go to the beach. One gets naked to shower or show the doctor something. One is the point, and the other is a transition between two states of dress.

      --
      More Twoson than Cupertino
  86. It wasn't statistics, however. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where are the error bars.

    If there were 100 people canvassed, that's +/-10 to 1 standard deviation. +/- 30 for 99% confidence, 20 for 95%.

    Lets say 74 men, 26 women.

    88% men were caught. That makes 65 men in the study. To extrapolate that to the entire set of men, 95% confidence that it would be 45-85 out of 74. 60-99%.

    If women were 1/3 as likely to be caught, that makes it 30% of women. Which makes 8. Extrapolating to the entire set 1-28 95% confidence limit. Which would be 4%-99%.

    We cannot conclude men are more likely to be cheating in science.

    More data needed.

  87. Except by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Suffice it to say that a female scientist was in charge of this study.

  88. What a strange paper.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What exactly were they trying to accomplish here? Reinforcing gender stereotypes is all?

    They had a paper that could have helped describe why scientists do misconduct and ways to avoid it and instead we have an article that simply causes more name-calling between the sexes. Men will remind themselves that women are for more likely to get their way through deception rather than overt action, while women will remind themselves that men need to be constantly monitored or they will lie, cheat, and steal their way to success.

    Maybe next time they do a project on academic dishonesty they could do it on, I don'y know, a real subject? How about: What causes or pressures are the tipping point to misconduct? Perhaps preventative measures or similar mitigating methods that can be used to either catch them or prevent them to begin with?

    Nah, let's just sling mud instead and stir up people. That'll get us more views! Really, this is like scientific trolling - pretty amazing in some ways.

  89. Take two by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I read that as "Mad Scientists More Prone To Misconduct", and immediately wondered if this is not the obvious expectation.
    I need a break.

  90. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, asking for sources or *gasp* investing a little of your own intellectual effort of your own and providing your own sources contradicting the original claim was standard.

    Which I did, but you got your panties all in a bunch and never addressed that.

    borderline ad hominem

    You don't know what that word means.

    There's a little thing called a "sanity test".

    Glad you brought it up. "Men and women are equally sexually abused" does not pass the sanity test, which is why I went looking for studies right away. And guess what? they immediately contradicted your statement, every single one of the first six I consulted.

    In other words it would be virtually a statistical certainty that every single woman in the united states would at some point in her life be sexually assaulted.

    If you knew anything about the subject you would know that in fact this is correct. All studies report at least 75% of women having been sexually assaulted (which keep in mind includes other things than rape).

    Lastly the references you provided are mostly for child abuse. Child abuse is indeed equal between boys and girls. You seemed to have missed the fact that we were talking about men and women at the workplace, not boys and girls.

    And a fuckton of DoJ and BJS statistics and reports.

    Grow up.

  91. The Far Side by sesshomaru · · Score: 1
    --
    "MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
  92. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck you bitch.

    Confucious say girls are nicer than wimmin.

  93. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is why wise cultures marry girls to men and not women to men.

    Women are fucking bitches.

  94. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The men in prison disagree.

    Some are in prison for relationships you women have forbidden.
    Pre-woman' culture (pre mid 1800s) men could marry girls.
    Then you fucking women had it banned and men persecuted.

    Fuck you women.

  95. Re:RTA y'all before you get your skivies in a bunc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mao Tse-tung, Art of war ?

    Sun-Tzu will be very upset

  96. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    TIFI:

    but being treated worse than ugly women is not one of them.

  97. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah! Won't someone stand up for the middle-class white male?

  98. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then why does HR get so pissy if we tell women they have a cute butt. Feminism has forced the corporate world to be dictated by their biology and not by what is natural for each sex. Is it really any better for women to work with sexist men who open about it then with sexist men who men who hide it? The ending outcome will be equally appalling.
     
    Carrying forward your analogy, what we have now is a fast food restaurant that kicks you out of for talking about how delicious the hamburgers are or how nice their buns look (sorry, couldn't resist). And before you jump in about how horrible I am and how this can not compare to a woman getting fired for not sleeping with the boss (what we used to call extortion), perhaps the problem was caused by feminists' good intentions that created this zero tolerance environment where all crimes are lumped together under the same name and not even jokes can be said out loud for risk of making others feel uncomfortable or offended--something that is in nobody's control except the listener.

  99. Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How do you thunk they got there...they learned early that men who cheat get a head in life...

  100. Re:Not exactly by geekoid · · Score: 1

    "Excuse me, but I've been in business settings now for nearly 40 years"
    well, you're anecdote will certianly wrap this issue up.

    ". Take responsibility for it. "
    No. I don't behave like that, and I refuse to be held responsible simple becasue I am the same gender as some of these assholes.
    Also,l I refuse to be help responsible for what happened to the American Indians, since i was not alive at the time.
    I will not be responsible for slavery, having never owned a slave.

    So stop trying to make all men guilty.

    " 99.99999%"
    do you understand how percentages work?
    BTW: 40 to 60% of women report harassment, 10 to 20% of men, so it is not 1 out of 10 million.
    Harassment is hard in that the grey area is very wide, and more charismatic a person is the less like their behavior will be considered harassment.
    Example: The Charismatic man complements you on a new hair cut, and its fine. The "creepy' guy does it and it's unwanted attention, or harassment.
    The are a lot of 'harassment' behavior that when happening to men aren't considered harassment.

    The example isn't given to excuse any behavior, just to underline how hoard these number are to determine.

    " then you can't honestly judge how it feels to be a woman "
    but you can judge all men?

    "be like to get all that unwanted attention"
    and you fail like so many HR people have failed.
    Don't do that,many thing that you list as unwanted are wanted by most men. So telling them to walk a mile in there shoes is naive as best.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  101. Shocker! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Male scientists more prone to misconduct. There's a "Shocker"! Waah waah waaaaaaah

  102. Mad scientists? by whitroth · · Score: 1

    I glanced at the headline, and misread it as "Mad scientists more prone to misconduct", and thought, what's surprising about that?

                      mark "mwuhahahahahahaha!"

  103. Misleading Report title. by jklovanc · · Score: 1

    The report title does not describe the actual analysis done;

    Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientic Misconduct

    The main issue is that the source of the statistics is the ORI of scientists found to have committed misconduct. These numbers do not reflect any of the following;
    1. Misconduct not noticed
    2. Misconduct caught by fellow scientists
    3. Misconduct not reported
    4. Misconduct not investigated
    5. Misconduct not proven.
    The more accurate title of the paper would be as follows;

    Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Found by the OSI to Have Committed Scientific Misconduct.

    Since they only looked at researchers found by the ISO to have committed misconduct that is the only conclusion that can be drawn. To attempt to extend that to all scientists who have committed misconduct would only be valid if all scientists who committed misconduct were caught and convicted by the OSI. Since we all know that not everyone is caught and convicted that extension is patently false. I wonder if such blatant misrepresentation of facts would be considered misconduct.

    It reminds me of a joke;
    An economist, an engineer and a mathematician are on a train to Glasgow. The economist looks out the window at some black sheep in a field and says, "All sheep in Scotland are black." The engineer looks out the window and says "Some of the sheep in Scotland are black.". The mathematician looks out, sighs and says "In Scotland there exists at least one field in which the sheep are black on at least one side."
    Considering all they observed was one field and one side of each sheep that is the only absolutely correct conclusion.

  104. Re:Actually, that is an example of cherry picking. by Applekid · · Score: 1

    Logic has no place here, it's an excuse to bash the patriarchy! TAKE THAT SOCIETY!

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
  105. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and the men still piss all over themselves to get a glimpse of fingernail

    I hate to break it to you, but that ain't piss

  106. Re:RTA y'all before you get your skivies in a bunc by chihowa · · Score: 1

    He didn't claim that Mao Tse-Tung wrote the art of war. He claimed that Mao appreciated the deceptive tactics of his mother and he appreciated the Art of War (which uses many deceptive tactics). Frankly, I don't know if this is factually correct (though it's plausible).

    Reading comprehension around here is really pathetic.

    --
    If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
  107. Breaking news! by perceptual.cyclotron · · Score: 1

    Male-dominated forum completely unable to accept empirical data with deprecating implications for males! Frothing rationalizations, irrelevant diatribes, and repeated demonstrations of a failure to even read the summary ensue...

  108. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As a man I have had a woman grab by butt at work.

    So sample size 1 here reporting 1 time it happened.

    I acted shocked and asked how her husband would react and it never happened again.

  109. Another State of Nature... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Misconduct means INFIDELITY? This all sounds like Yet-Another-State-Of-Nature (YASOF) where the individual is dead-or-keep-surviving against a totipotent entity it cannot change nor affect... djb

  110. Cock-up before conspiracy by denzacar · · Score: 1

    I doubt this has anything to do with bashing of any kind.
    A cock-up is always a much more likely reason.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  111. Depends on what people view as misconduct by Dabido · · Score: 1

    I've been in situations at work where a female has told a dirty joke and everyone laughs, but when a guy tells a similar dirty joke it's straight to HR and either out the door or some sort of reprimand. (I've also seen where one guy can say almost anything, sexist or sexual etc, and everyone laughs and just says, 'Well, that's Marty for you!' where as another male saying something not quite as bad gets his nuts in a bind over it). I'm not discounting that men would be the main perpetrators, because that's usually the case from what I've seen myself, but that the results might be skewed because of the fact men wouldn't report some sorts of misconduct done by men. I might add, a girl I used to work with was constantly getting propositioned by her female boss. She was afraid to make a complaint in case she lost her job. So, ones persons misconduct is another persons free pass. (And I'm damned if I know how Marty gets away with saying the sorts of things he does ... but everyone just lets it slide!)

    --
    Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
    1. Re:Depends on what people view as misconduct by Dabido · · Score: 1

      Sorry, typo - line should read, "... men wouldn't report some sorts of misconduct done by women'.

      --
      Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
  112. I've read that single-gender places operate more.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've read that single-gender places operate more like gangs:
    immunity from accountability ( for whichever kind of abuse it is that the dominant gender is prone to )
    becomes assumed...

    and that having a gender-equal workplace squelches that, significantly...

  113. Re:Actually, that is an example of cherry picking. by Holladon · · Score: 1

    Confirmation bias? More like cognitive dissonance -- on your part.

    I.e. Percentages match in the case of "all science and engineering fields" - let' narrow the field to only "life sciences". Whoomp! There it is! There are more misconducts among males in general, than there are males in life sciences.

    You either didn't read the article carefully or didn't understand it. From the article: "...nearly all instances of misconduct investigated by the ORI involved research in the life sciences, and the proportion of male trainees among those committing misconduct was greater than would be predicted from the gender distribution of life sciences trainees. Males also were substantially overrepresented among faculty committing misconduct in comparison to their proportion among science and engineering faculty overall, and the difference is even more pronounced for faculty in the life sciences (5)." (Emphasis mine). In other words, they weren't cherry picking a damn thing. They didn't need to limit it to life sciences to find the disproportionate misconduct. That's just where it was most egregious. Playing with the numbers to make them say something different isn't going to change the findings. I don't even understand your bizarrely cryptic note at the end about the fact that there are 49,810 -- ZOMG TEN -- men in life sciences. It doesn't seem that's even an actual literal number, but instead something you got to by plugging percentages into your calculator. This proves.... what, exactly?

    Perhaps instead of feeling like your masculinity is somehow threatened by the fact that in the upper echelons of academia, EXTREMELY PRIVILEGED AND POWERFUL MEN tend to be worse actors than their extremely privileged and powerful female peers, you could instead put your energy into, I don't know, something actually useful. And if you're afraid that the numbers about a specific subset of powerful people might lead people to draw unfair conclusions about your gender as a whole, well, gee. What on earth would make you think people might respond so unfairly. Perhaps, I don't know, maybe the fact that this is what people do to women all the time?? How about that -- maybe the problem, then, isn't the facts, but the sexism. Almost like the feminists have a point or something.

  114. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    all you did is repeat your "everything is the man's responsibility" assertion. you still based nothing on his comments whatsoever.

  115. Re:Actually, that is an example of cherry picking. by denzacar · · Score: 1

    Sorry for the delay. I'm not really the master of my own waking hours these days.
    Also, sorry if the following seems smug, condescending or unnecessarily sarcastic.
    Plain text + Poe's law + hostile media effect + confirmation bias does that.
    Aaaand I guess that saying "See, this is why you are wrong - it's in your brain." doesn't help much either.
    Just trying to set the stage and explain myself as a "trying to be helpful asshole" instead of a "condescending jerkoff".
    Also, sorry for the length of this reply. Just trying to be extra clear this time around. No guarantees though... It's late and I've been yawning for quite some time now.

    First, I must correct you on the cognitive dissonance part. I do not think it means what you think it means.
    It's either that or this is the case of a bit of projection happening here.
    And from that second paragraph of yours... I'm afraid that is exactly the case.

    Perhaps instead of feeling like your masculinity is somehow threatened by the fact that ... MEN tend to be worse actors ... you could instead put your energy into... something actually useful. And if you're afraid that the numbers about a specific subset of powerful people might lead people to draw unfair conclusions about your gender as a whole, well, gee. What on earth would make you think people might respond so unfairly. Perhaps, I don't know, maybe the fact that this is what people do to women all the time?? How about that -- maybe the problem, then, isn't the facts, but the sexism. Almost like the feminists have a point or something.

    You clearly went full emotional there and I'm a bit inclined to give you a pass on those ad hominems.
    If for no other reasons then for the fact that your assumptions of my "masculinity being somehow threatened" made me laugh.
    My gripe with the article is related purely to it being yet another example of bad science - cause there's plenty of that out there already.

    Then again I simply MUST point out a very dangerous error in your logic there. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here, I'm just rephrasing that last part up there.
    Basically, you are saying "So what if bad statistics lead to faulty conclusions about one gender? People make faulty conclusions about other gender based on its "otherness" all the time."

    Three wrongs somehow making a right.
    It's OK to present bad science as facts, cause it's representing only MEN in a bad light. Which is OK.
    Cause it's OK to be sexist against men - cause "people" are sexist against women.
    Then, you follow that up with "Sexism is bad."

    Screw facts. Sexism is OK because sexism IS. Sexism bad.
    So basically, once that entire thing runs it course and cancels itself out it boils down to just "Screw facts".
    And that really isn't much of a motto to live by.

    they weren't cherry picking a damn thing. They didn't need to limit it to life sciences to find the disproportionate misconduct. That's just where it was most egregious.

    Ugh... I am really sorry... but you are taking that quote out of context and using faulty logic on it.

    However, the gender predominance varied according to academic
    rank. An overwhelming 88% of faculty members committing
    misconduct were male, compared with 69% of postdocs, 58%
    of students, and 42% of other research personnel (Fig. 1). The
    male-female distribution of postdocs and students corresponds
    with the gender distribution of postdocs and students in science
    and engineering fields (4).
    However, nearly all instances of misconduct
    investigated by the ORI involved research in the life sciences,
    and the proportion of male trainees among those committing
    misconduct was greater than would be predicted from the
    gender distribution of life sciences trainees. Males also were substantially
    overrepresented among faculty committing misconduct
    in comparison to their proportion among

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  116. Re:Actually, that is an example of cherry picking. by Holladon · · Score: 1

    I'm replying late since you did, so I presume you don't have a problem with late replies. As humorous as I found your self-righteous preamble, I'll spare you mine.

    Basically, you are saying "So what if bad statistics lead to faulty conclusions about one gender? People make faulty conclusions about other gender based on its "otherness" all the time."

    Sigh... no. Nope. Not what I said, and not what I meant. There was some heavy sarcasm sprinkled in my last paragraph, and while sarcasm is difficult to translate from the written word, it was pretty damn blatant (and presumably the source of your odd note about "full emotional," which I'll chalk up to a combination of fatigue inhibiting reading comprehension and a veiled reference to quasi-ironic ableist humor rather than sexism). I'll try to explicate and see if that helps you out: my point was NOT, as you assume, that since sexism causes bad things to happen to women, therefore it serves you guys right, too. My point, rather, was twofold: first, I suspected (and still suspect) that you were willing to apply a harsher critical lens to this study because it happened to implicate the male gender (this is very common in society -- there's a lot of work I'm not going to rehash here going into the different ways that information about men is evaluated versus how information about women is evaluated -- this is part of how sexism is insidious and ubiquitous). Second, to the extent that you were implicitly fretting over any problems with using the study to draw broader conclusions about men in the abstract (and there is a valid concern there; assuming the study is factually valid -- and you've still yet to identify actual problems with it -- those facts don't tell us anything about the group of Men as a whole), it seemed an opportune time (particularly given all the unironic "wimmins is sneaky" comments getting crazy upmods left and right) to point out that, hey, what do you know, how about that, lazy thinking can be bad for men too. It was less a substantive point regarding the wrongness of sexism (to be clear, it's wrong no matter which way it cuts) than it was an implicit chastisement against hypocrisy, I suppose, though perhaps not entirely fair, as I can't *conclusively* prove from your comments that you're particularly sexist. So, yes, I made some assumptions about you, just as you made assumptions about me. It happens. I would've thought the relevant xkcd would have clued you in to the flippant tone, but different strokes and whatnot.

    I'm going out of order here, but you brought up a point without finishing: whence the implicit accusation of cognitive dissonance in my post? Unless you're referring to your belief that I'm misreading the study, which results, rather embarrassingly, from an unfortunate **second** misreading on your part.

    And it IS, unfortunately, another misreading. Here's your "gotcha":

    Ugh... I am really sorry... but you are taking that quote out of context and using faulty logic on it.

    Okay, first off, speaking as a philosophy major, it's like nails on a chalkboard when people misuse the word "logic" the way you just did. Good god please stop. If you want to tell me I'm misreading or misunderstanding it, go nuts. But the only "logic" I'm applying to it is implicit (the proof would go something like "abc words written in English have xyz meaning; the words set forth here are abc words words written in English; therefore, the words set forth here have xyz meaning," etc., etc. Boringly banal stuff. Unless you meant to make an epistemological point about assuming coherency and constancy and the existence of an objective universe and such, but I didn't get that vibe from your post. Let me know, however, if I'm wrong there and you really were trying to start a debate about whether or not language is an objectively meaningful communicative form, and/or whether or not you and I actually exist.) "Logic" doesn't mean any kind of argument. It refers to a v