gender bias

tags: researchblogging.org, female scientists, science publishing, double-blind review, single-blind review, cultural observation, gender bias, sexism, feminism A microbiologist at work. Image: East Bay AWIS. A few months ago, a controversy occurred in the blogosphere regarding whether scientific papers whose first author is female are discriminated against during the peer-review process, and the suggestion was to institute double-blind peer review as a way to mitigate this possibility. "Double-blinding" as this is sometimes referred to, is a process where a manuscript that has been…
tags: gender bias in science, female scientists, science publishing, sexism, feminism I have been thinking about this problem of reviewer bias against female scientists and have a proposal: all scientists should either choose or be randomly assigned a gender-neutral first name, such as "Lee", "Alex", "Jordan", "Reese" or "Ali" or something like that, followed by the initials denoting the scientist's real first name, along with as many more initials as that person desires, and ending with the surname, spelled out. Thus, if a reviewer is subconsciously biased against his (or her) female…
tags: researchblogging.org, Female Scientists, science publishing, science blogging, gender bias, sexism, feminism A microbiologist at work. Image: East Bay AWIS. In the wake of the Science Blogging Conference in North Carolina, which I was unable to attend due to financial reasons, The Scientist's blog published a piece today that asks "Do Women Blog About Science?" This article was written partially in response to the kerfuffle that was triggered last year after The Scientist asked what were their readers' favorite life science blogs. Several women, including me, noticed that they only…