In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Look at them ladies, trying to do science: 1 of 2

This isn’t particularly new, but I couldn’t let it go un-commented-upon because… I guess because I’m a masochist?

Cranking it back to April: Two female scientists had a manuscript (about, interestingly enough, the effect of gender bias on job prospects in scientific fields) rejected by the journal PLOS ONE. The anonymous peer reviewer’s suggestion to bring their manuscript up to par?

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 biased assumptions.

Authors Dr. Fiona Ingleby, a research fellow at the University of Sussex, and Dr. Megan Head, an evolutionary biologist doing postdoc research at the Australian National University, are not, in fact, men. Either of them. And because of that, the conclusions drawn in their study — that men have better job prospects moving into postdoctoral jobs in science — are automatically questionable. i mean, imagine all of the holes a male colleague could have poked in their methodology! Dr. Ingleby helpfully tweeted excerpts from the rejection letter, I’m guessing to spare other female researchers the trouble she encountered:

… 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 … simply because men, perhaps, on average work more hours per week, due to marginally better health and stamina.

Well, if Drs. Ingleby and Head hadn’t, on average, appreciated the way bias may, on average, prevent women’s work from being included, on average, in better journals, they sure as hell get it now. On average. PLOS ONE apologized shortly after the offense came to light and later announced that the peer reviewer in question had been removed from their database, that the researchers’ paper would be given a fresh review from a fresh editor, and that the academic editor who handled the manuscript has been asked to step down from the board. No news yet on the outcome of the re-review, but I bet they have some good ideas for the subject of their next paper.