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Male Scientists More Prone To Misconduct

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-a-guy-thing dept.

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."

7 of 300 comments (clear)

  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 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.

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

      Boobs buy a lot of forgiveness.

      Then folks should be forgiving you continuously...

    5. 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.

  2. 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.