Only one out of four full professors at American research institutions is a woman, despite the fact that equal numbers of men and women earn doctoral degrees in science each year. We’ve identified another, much less discussed component of gender disparity in science: Men are much more likely than women to heap praise on their own research and emphasize its importance. In a study published in The British Medical Journal, we analyzed the titles and abstracts of more than six million life science articles. We suspected that scientific teams led by men might frame their research findings in more flattering light, by using terms like “novel,” “excellent” and “unique” to describe their results. In the most highly cited scientific journals, male-led scientific teams were up to 21 percent more likely than women-led teams publishing comparable studies to use positive adjectives to frame their research findings.

Source: New York Times December 17, 2019 19:52 UTC