Female scientists told to get a man to help with paper.

[Curmudgeoness]

At first, I thought this must be The Onion. But sadly, it was not.

This just in from the land of great sexism: two female scientists had a manuscript rejected by a peer-reviewed journal because they didn’t ask a man for help. An unnamed peer reviewer for the journal PLoS One suggested that Drs. Fiona Ingleby and Megan Head find male co-authors—any men at all—for a paper they’d written, in order to make sure they weren’t leaping to “ideologically biased assumptions.”

Dr. Fiona Ingleby is a research fellow studying evolution, behaviour and environment at the University of Sussex; her co-author, Dr. Megan Head, is an evolutionary biologist postdoctoral researcher at the Australian National University. Their manuscript was about how gender differences influence the experiences that PhD students have when they’re transitioning into post-doctoral jobs. They surveyed 244 people with PhDs in biology and concluded that men had better job prospects, suggesting that gender bias might be to blame.

In a glorious demonstration of both their thesis and the general concept of irony, Ingleby tweeted that, although their manuscript was rejected, the peer reviewer did provide a detailed list of suggestions for how they could make it better. Like, maybe consider the fact that men work more? And they’re healthier? And maybe they get papers published in better journals because their papers are just better? You ever think of that?

Lots more at the link.

http://jezebel.com/female-scientists-told-to-get-a-man-to-help-them-with-t-1701245887

[mike_c]

1. peer review is often similar to sausage making....

This doesn't surprise me at all. Seriously-- the post review revision process is more-often-than-not one of convincing editors that the reviewers were clueless. In this case, it sounds pretty easy.

[Curmudgeoness]

4. Well, they are appealing it,

and from the sexist slant to the rejection, I hope that they have a case. Of course, we are not seeing the paper, so there may be reasons for the rejection....but the reasons given were inadequate.

[BlueJazz]

2. I'll parphrase an old saying>

"The only thing that keeps Women from slaughtering all the men is Women feel sorry for the stupid bastards"


.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. That old saying is new to me

but I like it.

However, don't believe that we feel sorry for them.

[BlueJazz]

8. Actually, I believe it's >>

"The only thing that keeps Women from slaughtering most of the Men is Religion"

[sharp_stick]

3. I've never published with PLoS One

but I've seen some really weird shit with peer review.

I had one come back for revisions and one reviewer suggested a rejection because he didn't like the shade of green I'd used for one of the graphs.

Other times you can tell that an anonymous reviewer is actually a competitor because of the review language and that can be pretty scary because if he gets your article rejected on crappy grounds you can bet he's going to come in fast and try to scoop the conclusions.

Usually it gets worked out with an appeal to the journal but this one really seems messed up. I'd be pretty pissed at the person that handed out the review assignments not catching this level of bullshit when it was returned.

At the very least I hope that reviewer gets removed from any future assignments.

[Curmudgeoness]

6. That is disturbing about a competitor doing review

on your paper. It would seem to me that there should be some protection from direct competitors working on your papers. But it seems to me that it would be easy to prove who the reviewer was if they were to steal your conclusions, and that would be a pretty big black eye to them.

I do know that reviewers can be assholes, but this one really took the cake.

[progressoid]

7. The Public Library of Science apologized and said they’re re-considering the manuscript.

"After their thorough Twitter flaying, The Public Library of Science apologized and said they’re re-considering the manuscript."



Thanks Twitter.

[daleanime]

9. Proof that anyone can be a moran.....

no matter how well educated.