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We offer a tribute to Dr. Ben Barres, whose groundbreaking science and refusal to remain silent in the face of injustice served as an inspiration to many. This piece and its companion piece by David Lipton are the final installments in our series about inequality in STEM.
Read MoreIn STEM fields women are underrepresented both in numbers of senior faculty and participation metrics [1,2,3]. Women leave STEM fields at all transition points, a phenomenon known as “the leaky pipeline.” … In this post, we highlight a study by Professor Gregory Walton and his colleagues, where they characterize feelings of exclusion, and attempt to mitigate these feelings through the development of simple intervention strategies [6].
Read MoreFrom courtroom sentencing to graduate school admissions, from voting on the president to choosing who to sit next to on the bus, our biases play a role in the decisions we make and the actions we take. Most interventions designed to combat implicit bias do not hold up over time or simply do not reduce bias. Amidst these unsuccessful interventions, Mel Slater’s group at the University of Barcelona found one method that did reduce implicit bias of white people against black people and whose effects persisted for an unusually long time.
Read MoreThe data dive into inequality in STEM continues.While the number of women in science has been increasing for the last twenty years, women are still leaving scientific fields at all stages of their careers. Research about the “leaky pipeline” suggests there is a disproportionate lack of female representation in crucial milestones for scientific career progression, such as receiving prestigious awards, publishing papers in important journals, and applying for patents. There are many ideas about why women continue to leave science as their careers progress, including differences in career goals and interests, parenting, differences in salary for equivalent positions, a lack of female role models and mentors, and explicit and implicit bias. Importantly, each of these factors contributes to a reduction in the visibility of women in science and academia.
Read MoreThe data dive into inequality in STEM continues. Letters of recommendation are absolutely key to securing admission to graduate programs and access to postdoctoral or tenure track positions. However, because letters tend to be personal in nature, they are also more susceptible to implicit biases. In the largest study on gender bias in recommendation letters to date, Dutt et al. quantitatively characterize gender differences in letters of recommendation across countries and institutions.
Read MoreInjustice and inequality are everywhere. Even the evidence-based world of academic science is not immune. How do our societal stereotypes and implicit biases negatively impact scientific progress and unjustly hinder career development?
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