Women in Science: It Take a Man

Apologies Accepted

Two postdocs wrote an article on gender differences in hiring rates in the sciences and discovered that men had a much easier time than women in getting articles published and getting hired. The article went out for peer review prior to publication and the critical feedback they received was that the article would have been better had a man helped them write it.

Perhaps, the reasoning went, the two postdocs allowed their own lady-biases to color their interpretation of the data. Because it just so happens that the two postdocs were lady-scientists. There was some more stuff about how male scientists can run faster than lady-scientists and eventually the publisher, PLOS One (Public Library of Science) issued an apology. PLOS was sorry, after news broke on Twitter (remember how great Twitter was before the Nazis took over?), that their reviewer had been so heavy handed and that the ladies had some hurt feelings - but also PLOS was going to take some action. And they did - but was it enough and most important were any men's feelings hurt in the issuance of the apology?