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Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women
ferrisoxide.com writes: A paper co-authored by researcher fellow Dr. Fiona Ingleby and evolutionary biologist Dr. Megan Head — on how gender differences affect the experiences that PhD students have when moving into post-doctoral work — was rejected by peer-reviewed PLoS Onebecause they didn't ask a man for help.
A (male) peer reviewer for the journal suggested that the scientists find male co-authors, to prevent "ideologically biased assumptions." The same reviewer also provided his own ironically biased advice, when explaining that women may have fewer articles published because men's papers "are indeed of a better quality, on average," "just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile race a bit faster." PLoS One has apologized, saying, "We have formally removed the review from the record, and have sent the manuscript out to a new editor for re-review. We have also asked the Academic Editor who handled the manuscript to step down from the Editorial Board and we have removed the referee from our reviewer database."
A (male) peer reviewer for the journal suggested that the scientists find male co-authors, to prevent "ideologically biased assumptions." The same reviewer also provided his own ironically biased advice, when explaining that women may have fewer articles published because men's papers "are indeed of a better quality, on average," "just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile race a bit faster." PLoS One has apologized, saying, "We have formally removed the review from the record, and have sent the manuscript out to a new editor for re-review. We have also asked the Academic Editor who handled the manuscript to step down from the Editorial Board and we have removed the referee from our reviewer database."
It's clear that the man who reviewed the paper is blatantly biased. His characterization that the quality of papers from men must, by definition, by higher quality clearly establishes the fact that he is a textbook example of the problem.
Nevertheless, it may also be true that the people submitting the paper were also biased. But we will probably never know. The trouble is, now that it's been exposed that they were rejected by someone who is clearly biased, there is no good way to honestly evaluate the paper and come to any conclusion other than acceptance. If you don't reverse the action of the biased person than you too will be accused of bias. But when the paper is accepted, far too many people will assume it was accepted because of the first review and it will never get a fair shake.
And before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I'm not suggesting that the paper itself is biased or not. There's no way to know given the limited information. I'm simply commenting on the fact that it will not be able to get a fair and honest appraisal now that it's been engulfed in this controversy. And no matter what the outcome, it will forever have one kind of stigma or another attached to it.
I'm an academic journal editor.
I'm torn about whether I would have rejected the review. I would have ignored it probably, but would have I rejected it?
As many have pointed out, if the genders were reversed, this would be playing out in a very different way. Imagine, for example, that males submitted the paper, and the reviewer suggested they have a female co-author. Many would see it as rational, if extreme suggestion, that almost certainly would not have resulted in this outcome.
And, although their suggestion about male superiority is pretty unpleasant at multiple levels, it *is* a possible explanation for observational survey results. None of us might like that, but it's possible.
In that way, the review might represent a very tiny minority, and a minority whose viewpoint I don't share, but it's not irrational, abusive, or nonsensical.
I really have no idea how the AE handled the paper with the editorial decision letter. Maybe they were inappropriate there. But accepting the review per se doesn't seem to me to be an appropriate justification for removing them from the editorial board.
The real problem is that, according to the article, the paper was rejected with only one review. They probably ideally should have gotten more than that.
Even that is problematic to judge, though, because it's hard to say what happened. Maybe they tried forever to get other reviewers and no one would review it? That happens all the time, especially with papers that are not very impactful--no one wants to review them because they're perceived as uninteresting. The editor doesn't do an outright rejection because they think it's worthwhile to review, but then none of the solicited reviewers share that opinion, so they don't review it. (This is why, by the way, if you're asked to review a paper, you should review it whether or not you think it sounds interesting.)
My broader point is that this is all can be much more complicated than it seems initially. It's possible the AE thought the paper was interesting enough to solicit reviews for, tries unsuccessfully to get any reviews, then feels unsure about accepting the one odd review, so errs on the "safe" side by keeping it, and then it turns out to be a powder keg.
Of course, it's also possible the AE was totally inappropriate and mishandled this completely.
The real lesson to be learned? *This* is the real scientific process. Not too pretty. It's why you should be skeptical of all the scientific research you read.
As a reviewer, I think it is very likely this paper was utterly biased and did not meet sane scientific standards. While it is unprofessional for a reviewer to snap and put in sarcastic remarks like these, they will almost never be the result of sexism, but the result of the pure stupidity of the "research" presented. Also notice that a paper is never rejected based on just one review except in utterly crappy venues.
Personally, I have written reviews that suggested the authors read an undergrad book on the subject or that an undergrad semester thesis may not be the right base for publishing at a good conference. Yes, many, many submitted papers are really that bad.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I agree that women suffer more from sexism.
I have to disagree with this, or at least to disagree that it is so clear-cut. Men receive less medical attention, die younger, suffer from more violence, and are discriminated against by the police and by the courts. Women are discriminated against in employment and in politics. At the least, I would say that it's ambiguous which gender suffers more from discrimination. More formally, I would say that it depends on your values, and how you weight each aspect of your life. If you want to live a safe life, be protected and sheltered, and raise a family, you're better off being a woman. If you want to dedicate your life to a specific field, and reach an exceptional level of achievement in it, you're better off being a man.
I must agree that you can't really say anything useful about this incident without knowing what was in the paper. The title makes it seem like an outrageous situation: "Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They Are Both Women". I imagine that what actually happened is probably a lot more nuanced.
It could very well be that the quality of the paper was rather poor. The article says the two female researchers just looked at the number of papers submitted by men and women, the number of jobs they applied to, and how long it took them to get accepted for a position. They then apparently concluded that, since women tended to be less successful, this obviously proves the existence of gender bias because the quality of the work cannot possibly be different, you know, men and women being equal and all.
I know that the article only gives a brief and possibly distorted summary of the paper, but if this was indeed the content, the reviewer has a perfectly valid point saying the results could also be explained by a lower quality of women's work. That doesn't mean that this is indeed likely to be the case, just that it would be an alternative explanation that must be ruled out before you can conclude anything about gender bias.
There have been other studies on academic gender bias, for example the one where identical papers were sent in with either men or women listed as the authors, and noting the discrepancy in their acceptance. And yes, a bias did indeed show up there, so I certainly don't rule it out, but you have to use proper methods instead of jumping to conclusions.
The remark about including a male co-author is obiously not a very smart one, but I kind of understand the reason for that suggestion too: a paper on the Palestinian conflict written by Jewish and Palestinian co-authors is more likely to be neutral than a paper written by only Jews or only Palestinians. So for this particular issue, having a male co-author is probably not a bad idea. Especially if they jumped to a conclusion about gender bias without ruling out alternative explanations, which would actually suggest gender bias in their work.
Once again, I haven't seen the paper so this is all just speculation on my part. The reviewer certainly could have phrased his comments a little better, though. Maybe he was just poking fun at them for writing an obviously flawed paper, but it clearly didn't get interpreted that way.