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At long last, my piece on sexism in research is live at @washingtonpost. (It will be in print on Tuesday.)
A brief reporter's notebook follows.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/sexism-science-medbikini/2020/10/23/4ac00e0a-1229-11eb-ba42-ec6a580836ed_story.html?tid=ss_tw
A brief reporter's notebook follows.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/sexism-science-medbikini/2020/10/23/4ac00e0a-1229-11eb-ba42-ec6a580836ed_story.html?tid=ss_tw
By the time I became aware of the #MedBikini hashtag, it had already ballooned to thousands of tweets. Researchers and medical profs from around the world were furious at the suggestion that being photographed living their daily lives was in some way unprofessional.
In the meantime, another story was bubbling: That of an Italian paper called âAttractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis.â A small but devoted group of researchers had been advocating for its retraction since its 2013 publication.
I've long been fascinated by retractions in research. (Looking at you @RetractionWatch and @MicrobiomDigest.) Over the years, and especially with #MeToo 
and #BlackLivesMatter 
, I noticed more and more papers being retracted after claims of sexism, racism and other forms of bias.
and #BlackLivesMatter , I noticed more and more papers being retracted after claims of sexism, racism and other forms of bias.
The pattern goes like this: Paper is published. Paper catches heat on social media due to bias. People then discover research irregularities. Paper is retracted, people apologize (or not), rinse, repeat.
It's incredibly easy for bias to enter the processâbut the entire academic publishing process is purportedly in place to prevent papers with research flaws from getting to publication.
Unfortunately, there's still a significant lack of women in positions of power in STEM. That gender gap is predicted to stick around for generations. It exists in all levels of the field, from grantmaking to hiring to conferences to editors. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2004956
The paper I just linked to analyzed the authorship of over 10 million academic articles and found that in some disciplines, gender parity will take decades. It's even worse in fields with a strong male bias. In physics, it will take over 250 years for women to achieve parity.
(According to the author's analysis, obv.)
There was a ton of coverage of the #MedBikini paper, but I wanted to know more about why it started. I was only able to find two brief mentions of the person who actually took the plunge and posted the first picture of herself in a bikini. So I found and interviewed her.
The stakes are high not just for people like Londyn, but for scientific research as a whole. The people I interviewed told me how grant money is thrown at what they consider to be frivolous or flawed research questions.
It's not just about money. Both papers involved irregularities in informed consent. The vascular surgeons weren't told their social media was being studied, and the women with endometriosis weren't told their "attractiveness" (for which there is no scientific scale) was measured.
When I spoke with @bethlinas, she told me how this can hurt other research. If people aren't confident that they'll be told the truth by scientists, they're not going to volunteer for or stick with clinical trials.
All of the people I spoke to expressed dismay or even outrage that it took social media scandals to get the papers retracted. These are just two of thousands of papers published every year. So what else is being missed?
âWeâre being sold a bill of goods that all those checks and balances work,â Ivan Oransky of @RetractionWatch told me. Without a more diverse workforce and more insight into why and how bias of all forms affect research, the trend will continue.
For better or for worse, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected this, too. Not only is it affecting women's productivity and publication prospects (see this preliminary study https://github.com/drfreder/pandemic-pub-bias/blob/master/README.md), but it's changing the way the general public engages with research.
Preprint servers allow researchers to comment on pending studies. But they also allow journalists and the general public access to research before peer review is complete.
(I have Strong Opinions on the ethical ways to report on this research, but that's another thread.)
(I have Strong Opinions on the ethical ways to report on this research, but that's another thread.)
With the public's eyes on research like never before, the onus is on researchers, grantmakers, and institutions to weed out bias before it hits the public eye. Otherwise, the public can and will call it out.
On the one hand, this is positive. Hooray, the public is engaged with science! On the other hand, it is risky because it adds the danger of the public acting as watchdogs when in fact institutions, researchers, editors, grantmakers, etc. should do the work ahead of time.
I'm grateful to the many people who gave their time and expertise to this story, and I look forward to reporting more on this topic in the future. Definitely get in touch if you'd like to weigh in or bring something to my attention, and thanks for reading and sharing.
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