Open letter to Nature Communications on article detrimental to women in science

To the attention of Dr. Elisa De Ranieri, Editor in Chief:

We are writing in the name of a collective of researchers to express our concern and strong disagreement with the paper that your journal recently published. We find the article and its interpretation of the data to be flawed in many important ways. Moreover, we strongly believe that in light of these flaws, this publication is highly damaging to the scientific community. The paper ignores, and in so doing, exacerbates, current problems and issues that the scientific community is facing concerning discrimination and bias*. Here we explain point by point our major concerns with this article on methodological, conceptual and ethical grounds:

• One major flaw is rooted in indicator choice (as mentioned by Dr Kerrylee Rogers in this Twitter thread @KerryleeRogers_):
  • Co-authoring does not equal mentoring. There are many reasons for co-authorship that have nothing to do with mentoring and vice versa. While the authors attempt to address that by surveying junior scientists who indicate that they received advice from the senior coauthors, this is a reductionist approach and fails to capture a mentoring relationship. At best, this paper should solely claim to study co-authorship.
  • Citations do not equal effective mentoring. The reductive nature of mentoring by paper authors to a few indicators is feeble and negates anything that is robust about statistical analysis.
• Their definition of junior vs senior authorship is broad and biased towards men. Counting 7 years from the first publication as senior makes no allowances for career breaks most often taken by women.
• The analyses compare papers published in high impact journals by men- and women-led teams. These papers represent excellent science, but the undercitation of women-led work they observe is sadly well-documented and systemic and applies not just to women but also other minorities (i.e. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). In their conclusion, the authors seem rather to blame women for a systematic gender imbalance in citation practices for which they are not responsible**.
• The authors claim that there is a cost to mentoring female scientists as their papers are less cited. While they acknowledge in the discussion the historical privilege enjoyed by male scientists (quoted below) the authors still ignore the systemic bias in citing female papers** in their general conclusion.
  • ”it should be noted that there are societal aspects that are not captured by our observational data, and the specific mechanisms behind these findings are yet to be uncovered. One potential explanation could be that, historically, male scientists had enjoyed more privileges and access to resources than their female counterparts”

Several of these methodological and conceptual flaws were highlighted by the reviewers, but the paper was published regardless. In contradiction with the authors' last sentence “More broadly, the goal of gender equity in science, regardless of the objective targeted, cannot, and should not be shouldered by senior female scientists alone, rather, it should be embraced by the scientific community as a whole,” the burden to explain the many problems with the paper’s terminology and interpretation falls on the shoulders of the same women who already have to work harder to get their papers cited** and secure mentorship***.

Finally, the authors’ interpretation of their analyses are shortsighted. The authors appear “to imply that women-women mentorships have little value - and worse, that policies promoting such mentorships should be abandoned” (as mentioned by Dr Josua Miller in this Twitter thread: @millerjm86). The answer to systemic bias cannot be and should not be to avoid working with the affected group. It is disheartening and insulting that such flawed and discriminating messages as having a woman as a mentor will damage your career and mentoring a female junior will not pay off as much as mentoring a man were allowed to be published at any, but even more so at one of the most respected scientific journals.

We therefore ask you to retract the article as well as publish an official apology as publication of this work perpetuates the culture of diminishing the value of women scientists.

We thank you in advance for your consideration.

A collective of researchers

References:

* Buckley, D.. “Changing Minds : Discussions in neuroscience , psychology and education.” (2016).

** Dworkin, J.D., Linn, K.A., Teich, E.G. et al. The extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference lists. Nat Neurosci 23, 918–926 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-0658-y

*** Moss-Racusin CA, Dovidio JF, Brescoll VL, Graham MJ, Handelsman J. Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012;109(41):16474-16479. doi:10.1073/pnas.1211286109