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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."
Plos One needs to accept all papers from women that describe unfair treatment without reading them. Anything else would be unfair because men are privileged.
When they resubmit the paper, they can use the initial rejection as a citable example.
Feminism is self-proving: Just complain about it, the shitty reactions you get back are proof that it's still a problem.
I'll bet the reviewers repeat ideas women in their committees say, as if they came up with the ideas themselves, too.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm sure if a paper with the opposite conclusion authored only by men was submitted for review, women (both reviewers and others) would be decrying that fact, implicitly because of the assumed tacit bias of the all-male authors (a plausible concern to be fair, but in both directions), and, if it was in fact the case that women had more articles published than men, suggesting that perhaps an alternative conclusion to systematic bias could be that women just are better in that respect would be a perfectly acceptable critique of the paper.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
There is a massive problem in the literature about bias in academia with ideologies of all sides pushing their agenda. This is connected to the amazing situation where nearly identical studies are getting nearly exactly the opposite results. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/15/trouble-walking-down-the-hallway/. The idea that everyone who is male is one side of this (complicated) ideological dispute and everyone on the other side is female is incredibly stupid.
My first and main reaction to this story is hilarity. The PC world appears to be well on the way to self-cannibalism...
is he wrong in saying that only having researching gender issues and only having researchers of only one gender may skew the research? what if this were two male researchers and a female rejected it for "ideologically biased assumptions"?
just sayin.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
How many papers can we find that have been rejected because all the authors are male?
I wouldn't be surprised if it had happened, but I don't remember reading of any examples. Maybe it's my forgetful male memory? ;-)
In any case, can anyone cite other examples (in either direction)? If they exist, it might be interesting to look into the stories.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Just as they have blind auditions for musicians.
It's possible this paper (which was on gender differences) is a piece of crap.
It's also possible the reviewer is sexist.
It may even be that the females who wrote the paper are sexist and the paper is a pile of crap AND the reviewer is sexist.
Hard to say without seeing the paper and the data it was drawn from.
In a gender blind society, we can't assume the females or the males are always right or wrong. It may even be from different points of view that different people will feel one or the other was right or wrong.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How could they NOT have seen the backlash coming?
Way back before the internet they might have gotten away with this kind of behaviour.
game, set and match
Wowsers! you can't get much more Victorian Era chauvinistic than this. But much of the sciences, like engineering are still good old boys' clubs
at least the journal did the right thing and canned these cretins
reminds me of when a dim friend of mine asked my gf who had just bought a truck why a woman would want a truck..... (same reason as a man -except for the 'validating my masculinity' part)
-I'm just sayin'
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 undoing all my mod points here to respond. But stop using "social justice" like some sort of curse word, it's as stupid as saying "socialist agenda" or "tea party fascists". You're making the assumption that any sort of social justice is a-priori wrong, like equating all environmentalists to being the same as Greenpeace, or all animal rights activists to being just PETA supporters. Just saying that life sucks and deal with is to support the status quo, but the status quo is pretty screwed up right now.
This paper right now is showing very blatant examples of sexism that so many "social justice" haters claim does not exist. We can't enter your world of everyone getting past all the -isms if the -isms are alive and well. The paper is not an irrelevant case, it's evidence that there is a problem (ok, so maybe it's only a problem for middle-tier academic journals with overworked editors).
The anonymous reviewer (gender unknown) seems to be of this same bent: because the paper's results seem to favor one charged viewpoint that the authors must clearly be biased. The reviewer assumed (incorrectly) that the authors never shared their paper with male colleagues. Further, despite the normal standards of the peer review process, there was no constructive feedback on how to improve the paper or a specific list of flaws to be corrected. The reviewer perhaps seems like the sort of person who rages at the term "social justice".
The paper was not rejected because of one reviewer. It's standard to have THREE reviewers, this is one guy out of three. Additionally, it's the editor's call whether to accept or reject it. Typically that's based on the reviewers recommendation. However, the editor could and should have ignored that one reviewer and accepted it anyway. Actually, the AE should have deleted the review and said to the authors "Sorry, the third reviewer never turned in his review, sending it out for a different reviewer." The AE could have accepted it even if all three reviewers had insightful criticisms of the paper and said it was horrible.
In other words, the rejection for publication could have nothing to do with that one review, it was not rejected due to that review, it was rejected by the editor who showed poor judgement in accepting the sexist review.
Why limit it to research papers? You have a push for more women representatives in government, regardless of the number of women that actually run, because a man can't represent women's issues, near quota systems to reflect diversity in the workplace, "mansplaining" being default for any male criticism of feminism, ad nauseam.
So why should research papers be immune from bias in the sole representatives are women?
...on the face of it, if the researchers are so good, what are a couple of biologists doing trying to publish (survey-based) social science?
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
... I'm not sure how to describe it, though.
You just did it in your comment's tittle: "poetic" - i just add "justice" to it!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
You guys didn't believe me when I said that Friday night is "MRA Clickbait Night" on Slashdot.
And here it is, right on time. Every Friday night since I noticed the pattern back in December, like clockwork. Sometimes the article is fer it, and sometimes it's agin' it but it always brings out the most charming fellows and their insightful opinions that "Bitches, man. They're spoiling everything.".
Slashdot really knows its audience, I'll give it that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When you have a group of people that declare "we are the Social Justice Warriors, we come in peace to fuck all of you sexists/racists/bigots/etc... IN THE NAME OF SOCIAL JUSTICE", well, don't be upset if people (like the one you replied to) use terms like "SJW's" or use the phrase "social justice" in a negative way - i agree with you that "social justice" is NOT something bad, but as a term becomes negative because of what i described. I AM a sexist/racist/bigot/etc that wants "social justice", just not the libtarded one those "SJW's" force to the rest of us. When the libtards (excuse the term, i don't use it as an insult in this case, but just for understanding's sake) act -with extreme ways/passion- "IN THE NAME OF SOCIAL JUSTICE", we, the rest of the world (including me, the sexist/racist/bigot/etc), we would start define "social justice" as... libtarded!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
So here we have a paper about *sexism*, garnering a review that is egregiously, over-the-top sexist in nature.
So, this would suggest to me (not by any means an expert) that the reviewer was quite aware of what he was saying -- he was being sarcastic, and/or trying to be funny. In other words, the over-the-top sexist tone was deliberate.
Wise? Probably not. But people often try to make points in misguided ways, and of those, sarcasm probably leads the pack. I'm reminded of the Justine Sacco controversy. Sacco, if you recall, was the flack who tweeted: "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just Kidding. I'm White!" So all the Right-Thinking People were all outraged. Except, Sacco is a Good Progressive. Her tweet was (obviously, to some of us) an attempt to sarcastically tweak White Privilege. (Picture her saying it while rolling her eyes.)
Same idea might apply here.
First mistake was submitting to the Playboy Lounge of Scientists.
The problem is that names are included at all. Papers should be evaluated *without* knowing who wrote them. Otherwise you have bias creeping into what should be a scientific review and editorial process.
If the female scientists would have instead wrote paper on the most efficient method of layering a sandwich, then not only would they got published but a Nobel prize.
Stick to what's best!
The problem with this case of sexism is that this is overt irrational sexism that genuinely belongs to another era.
Which is bad (obviously) and the perpetrators should be fully disciplined, but this is not an illustration of the subtle, systemic bias which is real but difficult to prove. *This* sexism is very rare and very easy to deal with, but the more challenging variety remains.
Men are constantly portrayed in both advertising and entertainment as buffoons and simpletons when they are anywhere near the kitchen, the kids, or the laundry. Everyone laughs when a man is kicked in the balls by a woman in a TV show/commercial. Where's the fake outrage about that violent sexisim in the name of humour?
I strongly suspect the paper was a "joke", and the reviewer was sarcastically reflecting the paper's bias back at the authors.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Do you have references to the "we are Social Justice Warriors" paper or the journal it was published in?
Trying to prevent sexism or racism or other isms did not used to be considered an evil thing to do, at least not until the last couple of years.
Trying to prevent sexism or racism or other isms did not used to be considered an evil thing to do, at least not until the last couple of years.
It's that "progressivism" moving always forward, at some point advocates for certain groups start to look simply like opponents of others.
when it's resubmitted. Just to remind them it's TWO THOUSAND and freaking FIFTEEN not NINETEEN FORTY SEVEN.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
You are describing a strawman that started as a deliberate joke and became a net meme as a deliberate "out there" insult. I can't tell if you are being serious or joking from the above post, which should tell you something about how utterly ridiculous it all is if you are not joking.
... Stop and read first. The issue isn't that they're women but that they're almost always women and they're presuming to talk about gender issues. Not women issues. But often as not men. It used to be called women's studies and just like the Department of War, changing the name doesn't actually change the nature of the beast.
The gender studies programs are generally speaking dominated by women, most of them are academic feminists, and frankly it isn't science.
They're basically like creationists in that they have a set ideology and they go around looking for evidence to confirm their bias.
If we all agree it is bullshit when the creationists do that, then can we please show a little common sense and knock the women's studies programs for doing the same thing?
Frankly, I don't see why we have the programs in the first place. The whole thing is properly a subset of anthropology which is probably why the women's studies programs HATE anthropologists. Seriously. Bring up anthropology in front of them... they'll vomit straight in your face, their heads will spin around a few times, and they'll start climbing around on the ceiling.
Its frankly another bullshit science that gets subsidized by undergraduates that are forced to to take the course and then have zero use for in the rest of their lives. And while you could say the same thing for anthropology of philosophy, at least there is some intellectual integrity in those fields where as in women's studies its just propaganda, group think, and often as not hate speech filtered through so many hipsterish orwellian terms that you don't actually understand the depth of fuckery until you've unpacked all the inherent assumptions.
Doubtless someone wants to disagree? Bring it on. :D
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
How come Soulskill always posts Identity Politics on Slashdot. He/she/it is kinda like those fake journalists that Gamergate exposed as pushing their political agenda on the wrong crowd.
Soulskill, please push your articles at Huffpost, they'll be appreciated there. We want News for Nerds, not the Neo-Marxist Narrative for Nerds.
ps. as someone who has submitted scientific papers they can be rejected for many reasons. Two women writing pseudo-science being rejected by a reviewer is not sexism - it shows the submitted article needed more work. Only a true sexist thinks otherwise (and only a sexist cares that the editor was a man). Think about it this way: if two men submitted a paper about the increasing misandry but their paper was rejected by a woman editor would that be evidence of sexism? or perhaps just they needed to do more work on their paper? or the current issue was full? etc.
Pushing articles that match the Leftist Narrative is a form of confirmation bias, intended to indoctrinate Slashdotters. It is very subtle. if enough articles push the Narrative from enough sources then people start to believe that the meme has some merit, despite the objective facts stating otherwise (which very few people bother to research or push back on, unlike the heroes of Gamergate).
This is a brilliant book how how this modern, subtle form of indoctrination is done. It's very cheap through Kindle:
"Disinformation" by Lt Gen Ion Mihai Pacepa (he is the highest-ranking Marxist defector to the West that explained how it was done):
http://www.amazon.com/Disinfor...
pps: I'm gonna be burnt with bad karma from the zombies that have swallowed the disinformation and now wage their Cultural Marxist Political Correctness war on others. But all I can do is say the truth as I understand it, and warn my fellow Slashdotters. Slashdot has become a sad place where Free Speech is pounded away by mod trolls.
Judging gender by a name is about as dumb as you can get. John Wayne would have kicked their butts.
Have gnu, will travel.
Q: How many gender studies professors does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: It's not funny, you sexist pig.
Acceptance and rejection decision are made by editors. Peer reviewers are intended to help the editor, nothing more. Editors frequently have to toss out bad reviews and get someone else to review a paper. Peer reviews are returned to authors to help them improve the paper.
The problem here is not primarily with the peer review, but with the editor, who didn't do his job. He should have tossed out the review because it obviously wasn't helpful for the author. He then should have gotten new peer reviewers if he needed them. On the other hand, it's unclear that he needed a peer reviewer in the first place, given that the paper dealt with a "survey of scientists", which is not appropriate material for a scientific publication.
Some of my favorite people ever are 20th-centurists! Plus I was born in that century!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
No, not the reviewer. Ok, they, too... But come on.. How misogynistic is it to require that an article, which was written by women, has to be reviewed at all? Worth than doubting the words of Jesus. Naturally worse, Jesus was a only man.
...on the face of it, if the researchers are so good, what are a couple of biologists doing trying to publish (survey-based) social science?
Doing science? Does it matter in what pigeon hole this particular research fits in?
Do you have references to the "we are Social Justice Warriors" paper or the journal it was published in?
O.K., i admit i was a bit "offtopic" - but i thought YOUR "lecture" (with which i agree in some degree) i was replied to (the first paragraph at least) was also a bit "offtopic", so...
Trying to prevent sexism or racism or other isms did not used to be considered an evil thing to do, at least not until the last couple of years.
But I AM a sexist AND racist... the evil thing those "SJW's" do is that prevent me express/discuss my opinions. I don't mind been called a "sexist/racist", even as an insult - my problem is that i have the "law" (i am Greek/European) gag me. In that way i may become more sexist/racist, in ways i currently think are stupid. And you have to understand that when it is dangerous and/or illegal for people , e.g., academics (note: i am not one), to express/discuss in a positive (or even just in a argumental) way their sexist/rasist views because of those SJW's, then asking me about "references to the SJW's paper/journal" may seem to someone like me a little hypocritical.
I understand that maybe you are from the USA and that we may be "lost in the translation" (e.g., i don't know exactly what the term "SJW's" means to a non-European), but i am sure that you understand the problematic situation when SJW's can prevent sexism/racism while i can NOT prevent their "social justice".
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
You are describing a strawman that started as a deliberate joke and became a net meme as a deliberate "out there" insult. I can't tell if you are being serious or joking from the above post, which should tell you something about how utterly ridiculous it all is if you are not joking.
I am not joking. And since i am a Greek/European i must inform you that "SJW's" (even as a term!) existed long before any "net" did (our first Greek SJW's -using that term as a self-description!- appeared a century ago).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
I mean seriously, how hard is it to not show who wrote the paper to the reviewer? Its none of his business anyhow when he should rate the contents of a paper, and on the contrary can induce a huge bias (not only for gender reasons)
How many "gender differences affect the experiences" papers can we find that have been rejected because all the authors are male?
And would we even hear about those on account of such "research" being highly corrected for political correctness?
I mean...
I know a guy with a masters in "gender studies" whose ideas about women boil down to "they get ahead by giving head" (exact words were "by sleeping ahead").
At this very moment his Facebook page has the following joke: Domestic violence is when your wife won't give you any and won't let you have any from others.
He is also rather successful in art and culture work, popular with women, once had a suspended sentence for breaking the other guy's limb and has been known to publish on his Facebook page "funny" songs about his real life friends "playing with children".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Well gender studies (back in my day it was called women's study) is in general I hate men, see how bad men are and how great woman are.
In general when I find people complaining how they are being treated unfairly, it is usually because they are not performing as well as the others.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
With respect, it falls into exactly the same category as the weirdo here (forgot his name) who uses the recent financial problems as an excuse to frequently assert that all Greeks are lazy - which is a pretty strange thing for anyone, especially an American to say.
Similarly the "social justice warrior" absurdity fits the personality of almost nobody that actually gives a shit about social justice. It's a very strange strawman. The only people I've seen that came close were kids in University politics when I had the misfortune to be exposed to such stuff some decades ago. Meanwhile people who just want to see rapists behind bars get the SJW insult directed at them.
And so it continues, the elevation of a secondary standard, a women's standard, to primacy. Oppose the accepted narrative of absolute equality in all things and you are sent to exile.
As I have been right now with a zero. See?
E Proelio Veritas.
With respect, it falls into exactly the same category as the weirdo here (forgot his name) who uses the recent financial problems as an excuse to frequently assert that all Greeks are lazy - which is a pretty strange thing for anyone, especially an American to say.
The problem my dear friend is that stereotypes/generalizations (both Greek words by the way!) may be correct. For example, we Greeks are wrongly strereotyped as "lazy", but we should be rightly stereotyped as (at least) "unproductive" (source). Similarly, when people accuse us Greeks for tax evasion, while i pay my taxes "religiously", i can't argue with them because most Greeks do it.
Similarly the "social justice warrior" absurdity fits the personality of almost nobody that actually gives a shit about social justice. It's a very strange strawman. The only people I've seen that came close were kids in University politics when I had the misfortune to be exposed to such stuff some decades ago.
Yes, "kids in university politics" are traditionally the most common "SJW's", but (at least in Greece/Europe) plenty of other kind of "SJW" groups exist also - i don't know if you know about the European left-wing (or, at least, a major part of it), but in my country many people describe themselves as SJW's with pride.
Meanwhile people who just want to see rapists behind bars get the SJW insult directed at them.
Hmmm... in Europe/Greece, our SJW's are clearly the people who want the opposite!
I think that i understand the "spirit" of your comment and i may agree with it in some degree. But as a Greek (and European), when i use the term "SJW" (a term used as a self-description -translated word by word in Greek!- by those communists that persecuted my family in our civil war, and still existing as a party in our parliament), i do it in a specific meaning. I am a liberal (...and a nationalist!) - "lost in translation" terminologies, different degrees of extremism (from both wings), other cultural/social differences, create a gap in understanding between European-Americans/Greeks-British/etc. I would try to keep those term to a minimum use, because you are right, they create a problem. It is just convenient to have a term that describes a groups - i hope someone will find some that does not give a negative meaning to "social justice" (but please remember: at least in the case i described, SJW's themselves use it!).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
This is only half true. Weaving rugs, sure, but don't forget all the dirty or dangerous tasks, which only men can and should do.
You are putting a very recent label (which was actually a joke that was been taken far too seriously) and applied it to something similar but not quite the same. The extreme strawman joke is not the same as reality.
Not as such, which is why it was strange that an American, a group who see a lack of mobility as almost a virtue, would use it. I'm writing misapplied labels and not about those in charge producing failure despite everyone's efforts.
You are putting a very recent label (which was actually a joke that was been taken far too seriously) and applied it to something similar but not quite the same. The extreme strawman joke is not the same as reality.
As i wrote: it may be "a very recent label" for you, but not for me (and those who use it as a self-description) - and "actually a joke" for you, but not for me (and those who taking this role seriously).
If you want to help me, i have a question for you: can you provide me with a good term that describe all those "political correct" left-wing people that want to exterminate racism/sexism/etc and/or even racist/sexists/etc like me? I would prefer a term that can be used negatively by me (i.e., as an insult, e.g., "libtards", not something like "a good person that wants social justice").
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
The paper they submitted was not in their field of education. It was a social science study on gender and the culture of science. The authors haven't made the manuscript available, so this is all speculation - but, the bits of the review they chose to share might actually make sense in the context of the manuscript. And they may very well have overreached themselves in a fit of hubris, believing that a couple of biologists should be able to do social science without any formal training. Earning the harsh rejection.
46 & 2
I didn't say anyone should go back to the kitchen nor did the person in the article.
My point was that women's studies programs had become ideological cesspits that need to be audited by someone not of the ideology.
What is more, they should restrict their conclusions to women unless they involve some male input.
Their studies often read like 19th century anthropology papers about "black people".
The work is frequently bigoted and lacking scholarly rigor.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We have a definition collision here.
We have a definition collision here.
Yes... it happens sometimes.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!