Scientist or Misogynist?

I was once told by an academic adviser that every good scientist will find him/herself at odds with his/her contemporaries, and the great scientists are just really loud about it. He went on to add, "and even the best scientists aren't always right, they're just louder than everyone else." Well, hear me shout. The recent issue of Science Magazine contains an article that, in my not-so humble opinion, is a great example of bad science. Granted, it's a sociology paper, and I'm no sociologist, so I'm well outside of my area of expertise... but, that shouldn't stop a good scientist from making a scene, right?

The first figure (pictured here... please don't sue me, Science Magazine) of the article says it all. For the past decade, the rate of female graduate students and faculty members at all levels appears to be rising at the same rate. And, it takes roughly 10 years for the increase in graduate students to affect the numbers of junior faculty members at the corresponding rate. This makes sense because it takes about 10 years to get from graduate student to Jr faculty.

We've all heard stories of females in the work place who are discriminated against, given unfair treatment, talked down to, or who have not been promoted while their male counterparts fly through the ranks with higher pay. I have no doubts that this has and may still happen. But, the numbers just don't reflect it. The authors go on to investigate the success rates of faculty members who apply for federal grants (R01) and distinguish between new and senior faculty members. The authors concede that, while there are far more men in high scientific positions, there is no significant difference between the acceptance rates of grants submitted by males and females. So, why not highlight the disparity between the gross numbers of men and women in faculty positions? Figure 3 of the paper (shown below) shows that there are twice the number of R01 grants awarded to men with PhDs compared to women with PhDs, but they fail to remind us that there are also twice as many male applications submitted. To make matters worse, they paste the success rate for females above each category, which looks really low (<30% and in the teens in some cases) what did they forget?... the corresponding success rate for males in each category, which is THE SAME!

Ok, so why are there so few senior scientist women submitting grants? And, I agree with the authors here. This is an outstanding problem in the field, but what could be the cause? Are women denied tenure? Is it harder for a woman to land a faculty job? Is the sexism so bad that women drop out of science just to avoid the misogynists? We certainly won't know from this study, because they didn't look at any of that data. The authors just conclude that for some unknown reason, women are dropping out of science before they become faculty members. But, are there any other possible explanations? Well, senior scientists were in graduate school over 30 years ago. What do you think the % women in science was in the 70s and 80s? Remember that graph in figure 1? It takes about 10 years for them to climb that ladder. Could there be a significant cohort effect of graduate enrollment in the 70s and 80s? The authors didn't think so. In fact, they just shrugged it off. I blame the reviewers.

Having just graduated from graduate school, I can say that there are a LOT of brilliant women in science today. I work with many of them now. Give them a little time. Science has no room for misogynists, and any capable man, woman, gay or straight, from any creed or sect will excel in their field. Stacking the data to advance an idea or an agenda does the field and the people no good. It just promotes bad ideas and tempts the moguls to institute bad policy. The numbers indicate that we're headed in the right direction. I'd even argue that the problem is fixed. We just need these junior scientists to grow into some bigger shoes.