Trying to find a general principle in #addmaleauthorgate

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.

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3 Comments on “Trying to find a general principle in #addmaleauthorgate

  1. If the reviewer had simply said "My opinion is your conclusion are ideologically biased and your evidence does not support them and here is why" it would not have been sexist. 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. But the authors stated they did have male (and female) colleagues read and comment on the paper, so that clearly is not true.

    it's not even clear how much bias the paper describes based on what the authors are reported to say about it in one of the links you use. It is unclear from the online discussion exactly how the reviewer thought the authors were biased (other than assuming that women do not perform worse than men as a general class).

    Also, go back and read how patronizing that sentence is. Imagine him/her writing that sentence to two male (and maybe more senior) authors. Sexism does not need to be overt. It sounds like the reviewer's other comments irked the authors. They says males may be more successful because they have more stamina and run a mile faster. Women get pregnant and carry babies in their bodies for 9 months with a lot of physical consequences, then they go through excruciating pain during labor. How's that for stamina? Honestly, as a person with a PhD (but no babies), I think pregnancy is a more close similarity to a PhD than running a mile. So that argument just makes no sense and reinforces the overall "this review is actually sexist" feel.

  2. Hi Marta,

    I agree with almost everything in your comment: 1. Your rewrite of the review is better than the reviewer's version. 2. The review was incorrect that having a man review the manuscript would have helped. 3. The review is written in a patronizing way. 4. The review's alternate explanation of stamina is likely wrong insofar as applied to the type of stamina needed to produce publications in biology.

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    I am not surprised that the researchers who received the review perceived the review to be sexist, because the review can easily be interpreted as sounding like something that a sexist would write. But I'm interested in identifying exactly what makes the review sexist or at least seem sexist.

    Let's use the hypothetical that you alluded to. Imagine that two senior male researchers coauthor a paper claiming that there is no sexism in academia; a reviewer suggests that these researchers talk with a female researcher to help ensure that the paper has a better appreciation of sexism in academia.

    I think that the hypothetical is fairly equivalent to what happened to these female researchers, and I think that -- in both cases -- the review would have been better to suggest finding a person of any sex to provide a check on interpretations. But, for me at least, the hypothetical sounds a lot less sexist.

    Maybe the difference in the above hypothetical is that women have different experiences than men, so let's try another hypothetical. The journal in this episode decides to conduct a review to check for sexism among its reviewers. The managing editor randomly selects three editors for this review team, but all three editors happen to be men. Is it sexist to suggest to the managing editor that the review team include a female editor to guard against interpretations that might disadvantage female researchers?

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    Your comment mentioned a principle that can be generalized: "the reviewer implies that the authors would not have come to the same conclusions if a male had read the paper." I think that a general version of this statement is that we should not assume that men and women would interpret data differently. If that's the case, would it be okay for the journal in my hypothetical to have no female editors on its review team? Or, to return to the hypothetical from my original post, would it be okay for the main professional organization in biology to draft a statement about gender bias in biology, based on the work of a team that had only men?

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    From the public parts of the review and from the reporting on this episode, it seems that the female researchers who submitted the paper detected a sex difference in publishing rates in biology and attributed that difference to sex discrimination; the "run a mile" section of the review appears to have been a way to suggest the possibility that there are sex differences that are not due to discrimination. That's my sense of why the reviewer thought that the manuscript had a problem in its interpretation.

    It is possible that male biologists would be more likely than female biologists to suggest that sex differences in publishing rates is not necessarily a reflection of sex discrimination. I'd agree that it would be better to not make such a sex-based assumption, but -- if we can't assume that men and women might have different perspectives on gender bias -- then I'm not sure in which context we can ever assume that men and women might have different perspectives. And if can't assume that men and women have different perspectives, then how can we also believe that gender diversity is important?

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