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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'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.
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.
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".
I'm sorry you're stuck in the 18th Century.
Please reset your Apple Watch to the correct date. It's the 21st Century, the year is 2015.
Most PhD and Masters graduates are women nowadays. In many of the top research fields the majority of faculty are women.
Please be advised the culture shock may be severe. But you will get through it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
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.
First mistake was submitting to the Playboy Lounge of Scientists.
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.
... 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.
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.
I did some reviews. No names. But usually one knows from which group a paper came. People working in similar areas know each other. And giving papers to reviewers, who have no association to a certain subject at all rarely makes sense.
And.. gender studies... High probability that the sectarians tried to cash in a vaginal bonus.