Month: May 2015

Looks like #addmaleauthorgate is winding down. I tried throughout the episode to better understand when, if ever, gender diversity is a good idea. I posted and tweeted and commented because I perceived a tension between (1) the belief that gender diversity produces benefits, and (2) the belief that it was sexist for a peer reviewer to suggest that gender diversity might produce benefits for a particular manuscript on gender bias.

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I posted a few comments at Dynamic Ecology as I was starting to think about #addmaleauthorgate. The commenters there were nice, but I did not get much insight about how to resolve the conflict that I perceived.

I posted my first blog post on the topic, which WT excerpted here in a comment. JJ, Ph.D posted a reply comment here that made me think, but on reflection I thought that the JJ, Ph.D comment was based on an unnecessary assumption. One of the comments at that blog post did lead to my second #addmaleauthorgate blog post.

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I received a comment on my first blog post, from Marta, which specified Marta's view of the sexism in the review:

Suggesting getting male input to fix the bias is sexist - the reviewer implies that the authors would not have come to the same conclusions if a male had read the paper.

That's a perfectly defensible idea, but its generalization has implications, such as it being sexist to suggest that a woman be placed on a team investigating gender bias; after all, the implication in suggesting gender diversity in that case would be that an all-male team is unable to draft a report on gender bias without help from a woman.

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The most dramatic interaction occurred on Twitter. After that, I figured that it was a good time to stop asking questions. However, I subsequently received two additional substantive responses. First, Zuleyka Zevallos posted a comment at Michael Eisen's blog that began:

Gender diversity is a term that has a specific meaning in gender studies – it comes out of intersectional feminist writing that demonstrates how cis-gender men, especially White men, are given special privileges by society and that the views, experiences and interests of women and minorities should be better represented.

Later that day, Karen James tweeted:

...diversity & inclusion are about including traditionally oppressed or marginalized groups. Men are not one of those groups.

Both comments refer to the asymmetry-in-treatment explanation that I referred to in note 4 of my first #addmaleauthorgate post. That is certainly a way to reconcile the two beliefs that I mentioned at the top of this post.

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Some more housekeeping. My comments here and here and here did not get very far in terms of attracting responses that disagreed with me. I followed up on a tweet characterizing the "whole review" by asking for the whole review to be made public, but that went nowhere; it seems suboptimal that there is so much commentary about a peer review that has been selectively excerpted.

A writer for Science Insider wrote an article indicating that Science Insider had access to the whole review. I asked for the writer to post the whole review, but the writer tweeted that I should contact the authors for this particular newsworthy item. I don't think that is how journalism is supposed to work.

I replied to a post on the topic in Facebook and might have posted comments elsewhere online. I make no claim about the exhaustiveness of the above links. The links aren't chronological, either.

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One more larger point. It seems that much of the negative commentary on this peer review mischaracterizes the peer review. This mischaracterization is another method by which to make it easier to dismiss thoughtful consideration of ideas that one does not want to consider.

Here is a description of the peer review:

...that someone would think it was OK to submit a formal review of a paper that said "get a male co-author"

Very strange use of quotes in that case, given that the quoted passage did not appear in the public part of the review. Notice also the generalization to "paper" instead of "paper on gender bias" and the more forceful description of "get" as opposed to "It would probably also be beneficial."

Here is more coverage of the peer review:

A scientific journal sparked a Twitter firestorm when it rejected two female scientists' work partly because the paper they submitted did not have male co-authors.

If there is any evidence that the same manuscript would not have been rejected or would have had a lesser chance of being rejected if the manuscript had male co-authors, please let me know.

One more example, from a radio station:

This week the dishonour was given to academic journal PLos One for rejecting a paper written by two female researchers on the basis that they needed to add a male co-author to legitimize their work.

I would be interested in understanding which part of the review could be characterized with the word "needed" and "legitimize." Yes, it would be terribly sexist if the reviewer wrote that the female researchers "needed to add a male co-author to legitimize their work"; however, that did not happen.

My previous post on #AddMaleAuthorGate did not focus on the part of the peer review that discussed possible sex differences. However, that part of the peer review has since been characterized as harassment, so I thought that a closer look would be of value. I have placed the relevant part of the public part of the peer review below.

"...perhaps it is not so surprising that on average male doctoral students co-author one more paper than female doctoral students, just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile race a bit faster than female doctoral students.
... ...
As unappealing as this may be to consider, another possible explanation would be that on average the first-authored papers of men are published in better journals than those of women, either because of bias at the journal or because the papers are indeed of a better quality, on average ... And it might well be that on average men publish in better journals ... perhaps simply because men, perhaps, on average work more hours per week than women, due to marginally better health and stamina."

Below, I'll gloss the passage, with notes that characterize as charitably as possible what the reviewer might have been thinking when writing the passage. Here goes:

"...perhaps it is not so surprising that on average male doctoral students co-author one more paper than female doctoral students,..." = This finding from the manuscript might not be surprising.

"...just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile race a bit faster than female doctoral students." = There might be an explanation for the finding that reflects something other than bias against women. Let me use an obvious example to illustrate this: men and women are typically segregated by sex in track races, and this might not be due to bias against women. Of course, I believe that there is overlap in the distribution of running speed, so I will toss in an "on average" and a "probably" to signal that I am not one of those sexists who think that men are better than women in running a mile race on average. I'll even use the caveat "a bit faster" to soften the proposed suggestion.

"... ..." = I wrote something here, but this passage was redacted before my review was posted on Twitter. That double ellipsis is unusual.

"As unappealing as this may be to consider..." = I know that this next part of the review might come across as politically incorrect. I'm just trying to signal that this is only something to consider.

"...another possible explanation would be that..." = I'm just proposing this as a possibility.

"...on average..." = I understand the overlap in the distribution.

"...the first-authored papers of men are published in better journals than those of women..." = I understand this finding from the manuscript.

"...either because of bias at the journal..." = That finding might actually be due to journals being biased against women. I realize this possibility, and I am not excluding it as an explanation. I even mentioned this hypothesis first, so that no one will think that I am discounting the manuscript's preferred explanation.

"...or because the papers are indeed of a better quality, on average..." = This is the most reasonable alternate explanation that I can think of. I am NOT saying that every paper by a man is necessarily of a better quality, so I'll mention the "on average" part again because I understand that there is overlap in the distribution. However, if we measure the quality of papers by men and the quality of papers by women and then compare the two measures, it might be possible that the difference in means between the two measures is not 0.00. I hope that no one forgot that this sentence began with a set of caveats about how this is a possible explanation that might be unappealing.

"..." = I wrote something else here, but this passage was also redacted before my review was posted on Twitter.

"And it might well be that on average men publish in better journals..." = Just restating a finding from the manuscript. I remembered the "on average" caveat. That's my fifth  "on average" so far in this short passage, by the way. I hope that my I'm-not-a-sexist signals are working.

"..." = I wrote something else here, too, but this passage was also redacted before my review was posted on Twitter; this ellipsis is mid-sentence, which is a bit suspicious.

"..perhaps simply because men, perhaps.." = This is just a possibility. I used the word "perhaps" twice, so that no one misses the "perhaps"s that I used to signal that this is just a possibility.

"...on average work more hours per week than women..." = This is what it means when the male-female wage gap is smaller when we switch from weekly pay to hourly pay, right?

"...due to marginally better health and stamina." = I remember reading a meta-analysis that found that men score higher than women on tests of cardiovascular endurance; I'm pretty sure that's a plausible proxy for stamina. I hope that no one interprets "health" as life expectancy or risk of a heart attack because the fact that men die on average sooner than women or might be more likely to have a heart attack is probably not much of a factor in the publishing of academic articles by early-career researchers.

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In my voice again. Some caveats of my own:

I am not making the claim that the review or the reviewer is not sexist or that the reviewer would have made the equivalent review if the researchers were all men. The purpose of this exercise was to try to gloss as charitably as possible the part of the review that discussed sex differences. If you do not think that we should interpret the review as charitably as possible, I would be interested in an explanation why.

The purpose of this exercise was not to diminish the bias that women face in academia and elsewhere. This post makes no claim that it is inappropriate for the female researchers in this episode -- or anyone else -- to interpret the review as reflecting the type of sexism that has occurred and has continued to occur.

Rather, the purpose of this exercise was to propose the possibility that our interpretation of the review reflects some assumptions about the reviewer and that our interpretation is informed by our experiences, which might color the review in a certain way for some people and in a certain way for other people. These assumptions are not necessarily invalid and might accurately reflect reality; but I wanted to call attention to their status as assumptions.

There has recently been much commentary on the peer review received by female researchers regarding their manuscript about gender bias in academic biology (see here, here, and here). The resulting Twitter hashtag #addmaleauthorgate indicates the basis for the charge of sexism. Here is the relevant part of the peer review:

It would probably also be beneficial to find one or two male biologists to work with (or at least obtain internal peer review from, but better yet as active co-authors), in order to serve as a possible check against interpretations that may sometimes be drifting too far away from empirical evidence into ideologically based assumptions.

I am interested in an explanation of what was sexist about this suggestion. At a certain level of abstraction, the peer reviewer suggested that a manuscript on gender bias written solely by authors of one sex might be improved by having authors of another sex read or contribute to the manuscript in order to provide a different perspective.

The part of the peer review that is public did not suggest that the female authors consult male authors to improve the manuscript's writing or to improve the manuscript's statistics; the part of the peer review that is public did not suggest consultation with male authors on a manuscript that had nothing to do with sex. It would be sexist to suggest that persons of one sex consult persons of another sex to help with statistics or to help interpret results from a chemical reaction. But that did not happen here: the suggestion was only that members of one sex consult members of the other sex in the particular context of helping to improve the *interpretation of data* in a manuscript *about gender bias.*

Consider this hypothetical. The main professional organization in biology decides to conduct research and draft a statement on gender bias in biology. The team selected to perform this task includes only men. The peer reviewer from this episode suggests that including women on the team would help "serve as a possible check against interpretations that may sometimes be drifting too far away from empirical evidence into ideologically based assumptions." Is that sexism, too? If not, why not? If so, then when ‒ if ever ‒ is it not sexist to suggest that gender diversity might be beneficial?

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Six notes:

1. I am not endorsing the peer review. I think that the peer review should have instead suggested having someone read the manuscript who would be expected to provide help thinking of and addressing alternate explanations; there is no reason to expect a man to necessarily provide such assistance.

2. The peer review mentioned particular sex differences as possible alternate explanations for the data. Maybe suggesting those alternate explanations reflects sexism, but I think that hypotheses should be characterized in terms such as substantiated or unsubstantiated instead of in terms such as sexist or inappropriate.

3. It is possible that the peer reviewer would not have suggested in an equivalent case that male authors consult female authors; that would be fairly characterized as sexism, but there is, as far as I know, no evidence of the result of this counterfactual; moreover, what the peer reviewer would have done in an equivalent case concerns only the sexism of the peer reviewer and not the sexism of the peer review.

4. I have no doubt that women in academia face bias in certain situations, and I can appreciate why this episode might be interpreted as additional evidence of gender bias. If the argument is that there is an asymmetry that makes it inappropriate to think about this episode in general terms, I can understand that position. But I would appreciate guidance about the nature and extent of this asymmetry.

5. Maybe writing a manuscript is an intimate endeavor, such that suggesting new coauthors is offensive in a way that suggesting new coauthors for a study by a professional organization is not. But that's an awfully nuanced position that would have been better articulated in an #addauthorgate hashtag.

6. Maybe the problem is that gender diversity works only or best in a large group. But that seems backwards, given that the expectation would be that a lone female student would have more of a positive influence in a class of 50 male students than in a class of 2 male students.

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UPDATE (May 4, 2015)

Good response here by JJ, Ph.D to my hypothetical.