More on that horribly sexist but frequently-caveated peer review

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.