Thread: Allow me a *potentially controversial* soapbox for a moment. I just attended @DaniSBassett’s amazing virtual talk at #UConnBIRC about her excellent new paper on quantifying citation bias (btw this is an absolute must read: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.03.894378). 1/

Her team elegantly shows how neuroscience papers w/ a female first and/or last author are systematically undercited, primarily driven by papers w/ male first & last authors. Not explained by subfield, impact, historical underrepresentation of women in science, etc. 2/

She made a concerted point that this is a group effect, and that **not all** men in science do this. She specifically highlighted one male scientist who showed the opposite trend of that expected. Kudos, sir! 3/

She ended the talk with a beautiful discussion of the difference between *equity* and *equality*, potential models for restorative justice to address these inequalities, the use of citation diversity statements, and nifty opensource tools to monitor our own practices! 4/

Seriously incredible talk. In Q&A, a male (my presumption, he didn’t give pronouns) attendee commented that shouldn’t we value scientific excellence over gender? I bit my tongue, but now I regret it (hence, this soapbox). To me, this is *exactly* the problem 5/

How many incredible female scientist (plus other non-male genders, as well as countless other minorities) have had their work overlooked precisely because of these disparities? How are they supposed to achieve “excellence” if their work isn’t propagated? 6/

To me, this sounds like an argument parallel to “I don’t see race!” The problem is, this statement is inherently racist, because it fails to acknowledge the very real systemic inequalities of the past and present. 7/

In fact, this is exactly the point! When we choose to ignore our biases (whether implicit or explicit), rather than accept our shortcomings and tackle them head on, we propagate bias and inequality, we become perpetrators, and the problem festers. 8/

He also noted having previously studied w/ a female mentor (a founding mother of his field) and that he was offended by the study’s findings. To me, this sounded parallel to “I’m not racist because I have a friend who is a a minority.” 9/

Again, Dani purposefully mentioned that this isn’t a personal attack on any male scientists. I applaud her for doing so. But the first step in addressing a problem is acknowledging that there is problem. This is the only way to make progress. 10/

I also do not intend this to be a personal attack. Rather a moment of reflection for all of us to check our own privilege and check our biases. We must all be a part of the solution. This includes all of us, even we who are female-identifying! 11/

Personally, I can’t wait to start quantitatively assessing my own citation biases, including “Citation diversity statements” in my own future work, and actively seeking out more work by badass women in science! 12/12